Solo
by Berzerkerprime
Summary: Rodney has been in a duet and a trio.  Can he handle a solo?  With the stargate on P14-626 disabled, his team safely back on Atlantis, and the Wraith closing in, it's time for Rodney to truly test his mettle. COMPLETE!
1. Teaser

Teaser

P14-626 was much like almost every other planet that SGA-1 had visited. Temperate – at least near the stargate – and forested with gentle hills and wide spaces of open grassland. The planet's stargate was nestled into a wide, open-ended valley between two arms of a picturesque mountain range that was not quite high enough to have its heights tipped with snow. Impressive formations of eroded stone emerged from the forest in places, dotting the ranges with jagged shapes of grey and tan emerging from the treetops. Like so many other worlds in the M15 globular cluster, colloquially known as the Pegasus Galaxy, it was the perfect place for Human life. So, naturally, the fact that it was like almost every other world Atlantis' flagship 'gate team had visited in its nearly five-year history was hardly out of the ordinary.

Except for one thing.

"What's a fjord?"

The question had been posed by the team's largest member, Ronon, as they walked at a leisurely pace back to the stargate. He had asked the question with a practiced mix of exasperation and boredom that suggested he had cared just enough to ask, but dreaded the forthcoming answer from the team's scientist.

"A land formation that should _not_ be in the middle of a land-locked mountain range," McKay answered, still fiddling with the readouts of his hand-held, ancient scanning device.

"On Earth, they're found in places where mountain ranges touch the sea," the team's leader, Lt. Colonel Sheppard, answered more diplomatically, "sort of like steep valleys that are filled with water, but they're opened to the sea at one end."

"They sound beautiful," commented the team's only female member, Teyla.

"_I_ like 'em," Sheppard agreed.

"Thank you, Slartybartfast," McKay mumbled, prompting a confused look from the two Pegasus Galaxy natives. McKay continued on without missing a beat. "Liking the way they look is one thing, but they should _not_ be where they are. There isn't any evidence that a large body of water was ever anywhere near this mountain range."

"I have heard many stories where the Ancestors were able to alter the land as they saw fit," Teyla offered, "perhaps they saw fit to move the water?"

"It's not that simple," McKay replied, waving his one free hand to punctuate his words, "even ten thousand years later, there would still be evidence that water had been there in the first place; mineral deposits in the rock, erosion patterns, that sort of thing. I'm telling you, they should not be there and they have to be related to the power readings I'm getting."

"No," Sheppard cut in, sharply.

"I didn't even ask, this time!" McKay exclaimed defensively.

"You didn't have to. I know where you were going. No, we aren't going to stay longer so you can track it down. It's getting dark here and it's almost 1500 hours back on Atlantis. And I know how you feel about camping and missing your afternoon snack."

"Oh, that is so unfair!" McKay protested, stopping in his tracks and throwing up his hands in exasperation. "The sun here won't be fully down for another two hours and I happen…" And here he pulled a power bar out of a convenient pocket on his vest, "… to come prepared."

Still walking on ahead of the scientist, Ronon cast a sidelong glance back at McKay. "C'mon, McKay," he growled.

McKay sighed and rolled his eyes skyward. Grudgingly, he tucked the power bar back into the pocket of his vest and jogged to catch up with the rest of the team, still idly fiddling with his scanner.

They still had another half hour's walk back to the abandoned village that surrounded the stargate. The village had become little more than a ruin not too long ago. The first team through the 'gate to this address had come on the heels of a MALP that had shown the abandoned town. Unable to resist the mystery, Major Lorne had led his team through to find out what had befallen the village. They had found evidence of a massive Wraith culling only a few years prior, but no indication of why the Wraith had seen fit to wipe out the village entirely. And there was that pesky, intermittent power reading, prompting the follow-up by SGA-1.

As the team was just about to begin the ascent up the last of the rolling hills before they reached town, Telya suddenly stopped in her tracks and lifted her P-90. "John!" she exclaimed. "Wraith are near!"

The rest of the team stopped dead and clustered in close. Long ago, they had learned to trust the mysterious sense that was the side-effect of her ancestor's Wraith DNA. There was no question; if Teyla said Wraith were near, they were near.

"How far?" Sheppard asked.

Teyla didn't need to answer. In the distance, from the direction of the abandoned village, the all-too-familiar whine of the engines of Wraith darts could be heard, followed by the tell-tale sound of the stargate's wormhole closing.

"I think 'the village' is a pretty good guess," McKay said.

"Tree-line, now," Sheppard said, indicating with the muzzle of his P-90 the trees that were just short of a quarter-mile away, in the shadow of the mountain.

The team fell into a well-practiced natural formation. Sheppard led the way, his P-90 pointed ahead, his head swiveling from side to side and up to watch for any signs of the enemy. Teyla and McKay were next, following as close behind as they could. Finally, Ronon brought up the rear, his attention half behind them, watching for any pursuers. Sheppard didn't stop when they hit the tree-line, but took them into the first layer of underbrush by about ten yards before coming to a halt to better assess the situation.

"I changed my mind. I'm in favor of leaving now," McKay said in a hushed whisper around a few puffs of breath.

"Won't be easy," said Ronon, crouching down to peer between the bushes at the abandoned village, "there's at least ten of 'em. Looks like they're settin' up a base camp in town."

"Near the stargate," Teyla said with a touch of lamentation.

"Fantastic," Sheppard ground out, scanning the woods for any sign of the Wraith, "we gotta find a way past 'em."

"Gotta get closer, get some intel," said Ronon, "find a path."

"You want to go _closer_!" McKay exclaimed.

"It's where the 'gate is, Rodney," said Sheppard, "we don't have a lot of options. Now, the 'gate is in the middle of town and Main Street runs in a straight shot from one edge of town to the other, right through the gate. If we circle around in the trees, we should be able to look right down the street to the 'gate."

"And do what, exactly? Make a bee-line and hope they don't see us dialing?"

"Looks like half of 'em are movin' off," Ronon commented from his perch, still watching the far-off town, "heading the way we just came from."

"You don't suppose they're looking for that power source," McKay guessed.

"Doesn't matter," said Sheppard, "if half of 'em want to leave, I'm not going to stop 'em. Okay, stay low, stay quiet, stay below the ridge line. Let's move."

Sheppard sprang into motion, his footfalls barely making any sound on the brush-covered ground. The team fell into step behind him. They moved through the woods in tight formation, dodging trees and bushes. When the Colonel brought them to a halt again, it was closer to the edge of the tree-line, peering out at the town, looking down the main thoroughfare at the stargate. The path was clear all the way to the Dial Home Device and the 'gate itself, for the moment.

"Regular patrol cycle?" Ronon guessed.

"Probably," Sheppard agreed, "which means we don't have much time. McKay, you dial. Everyone else, cover him." Sheppard took one last sweep of the area with his eyes, then brought his P-90 to bear and led the way out of the tree-line.

The four of them made their way at a fast run down the road, into the town, as fast as their collective legs could carry them. They had only made it about a block into the town when a blast from a Wraith stunner winged past Teyla, missing her head by mere inches. Ronon was the first to react, turning on the balls of his feet and firing off a round from his blaster, hardly breaking stride. More stunner fire followed and soon both Teyla and Sheppard had opened up with their guns as Wraith rounded one of the corners in pursuit.

For his part, Rodney left his M9 Berretta in its holster on his thigh and concentrated on simply running as fast as he could to keep up with the rest of the team. Trusting in the combat abilities of the others, he set his sight on the DHD and poured on as much speed as he could muster. He skidded to a halt, half-colliding with the DHD as stunner fire narrowly missed him. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Teyla take up position to one side of the stargate, firing off rounds from her P-90 to pick off the approaching Wraith. Ronon was near her, also issuing fire from his weapon. Sheppard acted as rear guard.

The sound of a Wraith dart filled the air above them again as Rodney began to dial.

"Sheppard!" came Ronon's shouted warning, just as Rodney finished the sequence and the wormhole activated. It was only another moment before Rodney had keyed in his IDC.

"You two, get through the 'gate!" Sheppard ordered Ronon and Teyla, even as he took up position closer to Rodney to continue covering the scientist. A moment later and there was the distinctive slurping sound of two people going through the 'gate.

Suddenly, a swear word and a report of gunfire were the only warning that Rodney had before he found himself flying to one side, having been shoved out of the way of a Wraith culling beam by Sheppard. Rodney stumbled uncontrollably toward a nearby ruined building. Unable to stop himself, he tumbled head over heels through the rotten boards covering a low window. It took him a moment to recover while the report of Sheppard's P-90 continued, moving closer to the 'gate as it sounded. Rodney was just able to pull himself up far enough to peer over the window casement in time to see Sheppard desperately firing his weapon at an approaching Wraith dart. Just as the dart was passing over head, it reached its breaking point and exploded. The concussion from the blast knocked Sheppard off his feet and through the open wormhole.

But, of course, the bad news didn't end there. The burning pieces of the dart fell straight out of the sky and buried themselves in the ground right at the base of the stargate. The ring began to rock back and forth alarmingly. Rodney could not help but throw his hand into the air as if to hold it up. But of course, there was nothing to be done. The ring fell forward, the wormhole winking out, dust from the road rising around it in the middle of an almost unnatural and disturbingly ominous silence.

"Oh, no, no, no, no, no," Rodney protested quietly as he slowly climbed to his feet, his mouth agape, "not fair. Seriously, not good."

He didn't have time to continue his protests against chance, though. Two Wraith rounded a corner, heading straight for the remains of their downed dart. Rodney only barely managed to drop back to the floor of his make-shift hiding place before they saw him.

Rodney could only watch as the Wraith began to pick through the downed remains of their dart. He was utterly alone and utterly stranded.


	2. Act 1

Act One

Sheppard skidded on his back along the floor of the Atlantis 'gate room and lurched to a halt. Debris from the explosion that had hurled him through the 'gate clattered to the floor in hot chunks nearby and he covered his face and head as best he could in defense. His ears rang for several long moments afterward. However, he felt the strong hands of his teammates helping him to his feet. As his vision cleared, he found Teyla on one side, holding his arm, and Ronon nearby on the other.

The stargate had gone dark sometime before his senses recovered and as his hearing returned, he looked about for his final teammate. McKay was no where to be found.

"Where's Rodney?" the Colonel asked in alarm as he got his feet under him again.

"He did not come through the stargate," Teyla stated grimly, confirming the worst.

Sheppard was in motion almost instantly, taking the stairs up to the control room two and sometimes three at a time. Ronon and Teyla trailed after him. "Chuck, dial that planet back!" Sheppard barked as he careened around the door frame and practically bowled into the erstwhile Canadian 'gate technician.

"I can't, the address won't lock in," Chuck said, frantically working the controls.

"No, no, no, that isn't it," came the heavily Czech-accented voice of Radek Zelenka from another set of controls, "the stargate at that address is no longer reading as active. Something has shut it down."

John pounded a fist on the console and rolled his eyes skyward before whirling on Radek. "You mean, like a Wraith dart exploding right next to it?"

Radek shook his head doubtfully, his fingers still working at the keys of his computer as he pulled up reading after reading to try and determine what had happened. "stargates more robust than that."

"Well, then what!"

"From this end, everything is working," Radek insisted, "whatever it is, it happened at other stargate. And since we can't make connection, we can't determine a cause."

"Well, you better find a way and fast!" Sheppard shouted. "McKay is still stuck on that planet! By himself! With Wraith in the area!"

"What's happening," Richard Woolsey demanded as he swept into the room from his office. The balding man looked none too happy to have been interrupted from his regular work. But Sheppard had come to recognize when the older man's irritation was tempered with concern. It was evident that having Atlantis' flagship 'gate team return with flaming debris and missing a man had rattled Woolsey.

"Wraith showed up while we were returning to the 'gate," Sheppard reported, "it shut down before Rodney came through and we can't redial."

"A system error?" the expedition leader asked, turning to Radek.

The Czech shook his head almost absently, the majority of his focus still on his computer as he pulled up screen after screen of information and ran diagnostics. "Not that we can see," he said, "and no problems with the hardware at this end, either. Whatever it is, it's at other end."

"We gotta get back there before McKay gets himself fed on," said Ronon, darkly.

"If we cannot use the stargate, perhaps we should use the _Daedalus_," Teyla suggested.

"Right, it's in orbit," Sheppard said, holding a hand up in realization, then whirled back around to Chuck, "get Colonel Caldwell on the line, fast!"

"Hold on," Woolsey ordered, "that may not be workable."

A dread silence fell on the control room as Sheppard slowly turned to regard Woolsey with a spark of anger in his eyes. There wasn't a single person in the room who wasn't aware of Sheppard's no-exceptions leave-no-man-behind policy. Over the course of the past year it had butted up against Woolsey's pragmatic approach on more than one occasion, with spectacular results more often than not. Add in the fact that McKay had become Sheppard's close friend over the course of the expedition and this was a situation rapidly approaching the powder keg stage.

"Don't you dare do this, Woolsey," Sheppard ground out, glaring daggers, "not to me. Not to McKay."

For a split second, the room felt as though it was going to explode as the two men stared each other down across the consoles. But, it was Woolsey who blinked first, holding up a placating hand a second later; a second that felt like hours to the rest of the expedition members in the room.

"That isn't what I mean," Woolsey said, taking a few slow steps toward Sheppard as the whole room breathed a sigh of relief. "At the _Daedalus_' top speed, P14-626 is more than a day from here. Even if the _Daedalus_ were to leave right now, McKay would still be stranded in hostile territory for more than 24 hours."

"So you're saying there's no point?" Ronon growled, hovering a step closer to Sheppard's shoulder.

"No, I'm saying that we should be prepared for the worst."

Teyla rested a hand on Sheppard's shoulder. The gesture seemed to soften and stifle the biting remark that Sheppard quite obviously had prepared for Woolsey. "Perhaps this conversation would best be continued in your office, Mister Woolsey?" She gestured with her eyes to the rest of the room and the expedition members who were gathering, all watching the exchange with baited breath, waiting to learn if the fate of the expedition's Head of Science would be decided right then and there.

For his part, Woolsey seemed to snap out of the battle of wills in which he was engaged and quickly glanced about the room. He took a deep breath and squared his shoulders. "Quite right, Teyla," he agreed, "Chuck, please contact the _Daedalus_ and request Colonel Caldwell join us. Let them know it's an emergency. Doctor Zelenka, if you could join us as well."

Woolsey then turned on his heel and wordlessly headed back to his office. Sheppard marched after him with Teyla and Ronon close behind. Zelenka tapped out a few more key strokes, scrambled to unhook his laptop from the console while barking out orders to the rest of his team present in Czech, then jogged off after them.

* * *

Why wouldn't those damn life-suckers leave, already?

Still hunkered down in his impromptu hiding place in the abandoned town on P14-626, Rodney watched the Wraith with mounting panic. A couple of them had inspected the face-down stargate, then moved on to the broken remains of their downed dart. They had been elbow-deep in the smoking guts of the thing for what by now felt like hours to McKay. Several Wraith drones, the soldiers with the unnecessarily horrifying and faceless masks, patrolled the area while they worked. Rodney watched them, his heart pounding and his breath caught at the very top of his throat.

Dammit, what were they doing?

As one of the drones passed a little too near – which, frankly at this point, would have been within ten parsecs, in Rodney's opinion – McKay ducked as far back into the shadows as he could. He could just barely see the drone's feet through a small gap between the broken wood and the dirt floor. He literally held his breath as the drone hesitated, his feet spinning as he turned to survey the area and then moved on. McKay let his breath out again slowly, careful not to make any noise. Then, he took a couple of breaths, counted to three, and carefully peeked back out through the broken wood to see where the Wraith were.

Three of them were just finishing up whatever they were doing with the downed dart. There was an audible hum from the ruined machinery before the white light of the Wraith culling beam sprang to life and four more Wraith materialized out of the device. Rodney couldn't help the exasperated sigh that escaped his lips.

Great. More of them. Rodney decided that it was only a matter of time before they discovered that he was there. And then what? Well, they would make a quick nosh out of him and move on, that's what. Or maybe he would get stunned and then end up in one of those damned cocoons again. Or maybe one of them would be informed enough to recognize that he was from the Atlantis expedition and then he would be taken to their Queen to be tortured for information in horrible, freaky, alien, life-sucking, bug-people ways.

Yeah, that would be his luck.

He really should have been running. He was good at that. After five years of being on a 'gate team with Colonel Disaster, he had gotten very, very good at that. Of course, the rest of the team was always there to cover his expeditious retreat. Not so much, this time.

Finally, the Wraith convened with the leader who then signaled for them to move off to another area. Even so, it was a good ten minutes of complete silence from the surrounding area before Rodney dared to move a muscle. It was another fifteen before he decided to risk peering out from his hiding place to check for the Wraith.

Cautiously, Rodney looked up and down the main street of the abandoned village. Seeing no indication that the Wraith had remained in the tiny, ruined town, he slowly emerged from the broken building and approached the downed stargate. He paused near the remains of the DHD and just stared at the gigantic ring.

"Okay," he whispered to himself, half in panic, "the stargate is down. Face-down. Very, very face-down. And the DHD is totaled besides. Which means, no dialing out or in. No way off this god-forsaken rock except by starship. Okay. Okay. No panicking. Stay calm." He started to pace around the ring, keeping a distance as if the offending device would suddenly jump to life, somehow. "They have to have tried to dial back in by now, which means that they know the stargate is inactive. Zelenka will be able to tell that the problem is at this end, so… nothing they can do. So… so I'm screwed. Royally, astronomically screwed." He stopped in his tracks, scrubbing his hands over his face. Then he caught himself, his hands balling into fists. "No. I'm not going to panic. Need to think. If anyone can think their way out of a problem, it sure as hell would be me. So… what happens next? What happens next is… Sheppard. Sheppard happens next. He leaves no one behind, ever, so he'll go on the warpath. If they can't use the 'gate, he'll make them do something else. Only other option is a ship, so he'll badger them into sending the _Daedalus_. The distance from here to New Lantea is… so that means… more than a day for them to get here. And we're back to being screwed!"

Rodney suddenly became aware that he had said that last word a little too loudly when he heard something, some creature or another, go skittering off from a small hole near the foundation of a ruined building. He clamped a hand over his mouth, as if to physically stop his panicked tirade, and froze. For a long moment, he listened to the silence around him for any sign that he had been discovered. No other movement was apparent, but Rodney suddenly felt exposed and vulnerable. The idea entered into his head, then, that the Wraith might return to the only stargate on the planet, whether or not it was functional. Rodney wasn't able to flip the gate over, but the Wraith, with their remaining darts, certainly could.

He had to leave. He had to hide. He had to buy time. Sheppard would come for him. So would Teyla and Ronon.

But where to go? It wasn't like they had a pre-arranged rescue site on this random little abandoned world in the middle of nowhere.

Wait. Was it in the middle of nowhere? Just where was the nearest habitable planet, anyway?

No, no, that didn't matter. Open space was between them.

Okay, now he was starting to think about stupid things. "Jesus, McKay," he whispered to himself, "knock it off and just go somewhere. It doesn't matter."

Tree-line. Sheppard had told them to make for the tree-line, earlier. Cover. Yes. That was what Rodney needed. Get out of sight, then make a plan.

Rodney took off at a run for the woods just outside the west end of town, heading toward the setting sun, opposite the direction that the Wraith had gone. The trees and the underbrush could provide him some cover for a little while. Then, he could take stock, see what he had available to him and make a plan. It's what Sheppard would do. In point of fact, it's what Sheppard had trained Rodney to do during those interminable wilderness training sessions he had insisted on back in the early days.

God, he was going to have to admit to Sheppard that he had been right about those damn training sessions.

As Rodney broke through the first layer of trees and started picking his way into the woods, through the underbrush, he grudgingly dredged up those lessons from the early days in his mind. He had had occasion to think about some of the material in bits and pieces over the years. But this was liable to take every little tidbit of information that Sheppard, Ford, and Teyla had shoved down his throat during that first year.

The whole damn thing had started with an acronym; SER. Most of the material had fallen into the categories of the first two letters. S was for survive. E was for evade. Things like how to traverse terrain without being seen and make fires so that they wouldn't give off smoke.

But what was the R for? Rodney couldn't remember. Nugget after nugget of information passed through his brain, one by one. Each of them fell into the categories of survival or evasion. If he didn't remember what the R had stood for, it was going to bother him. Just what he needed in a crisis; something nagging at the back of his brain.

Rodney trudged his way further into the woods and finally came to a small outcropping of stone that emerged from the hill side. It was low and hollow, just large enough to slip inside, yet not so deep that it would be dark. It was reasonable cover for simply staying out of sight for a while, though it probably would make for a lousy shelter. He figured it would do for the moment, long enough for him to stop, catch his breath, take stock, and come up with a plan of some sort. He took a quick look around for any indication that he had been spotted, then ducked under the outcropping.

_First things first, you look at what'cha got_, he heard Sheppard's voice in his head, the memory of that long-ago training session, _see what's available to you and what you can use to hold out for as long as possible._

He started emptying his pockets. One by one, he placed the myriad of objects he had with him on the ground. His M9 Beretta, an extra clip of ammo, five power bars, his tablet PC with three hours of battery life remaining, a flashlight, his life signs detector, a Swiss army knife, a small tool kit, some water purification tablets, a water bottle, a lighter, a mylar thermo blanket, his radio, some sterile bandages, a couple of extra control crystals that he carried around just in case he ever needed to replace one, and a magnet.

"Why do I have a magnet?" Rodney wondered aloud, his voice flirting with falsetto. He figured he had probably put it in one of his vest pockets during some past mission – magnets had a lot of applications when it came to working with tech – and had just forgotten to remove it.

It wasn't a lot. For one thing, fifteen bullets was barely enough to kill one Wraith at full strength, let alone however many were running around this place. All he had were two clips of fifteen rounds. He might be able to take out two. And his food supply was dismal. Five power bars to get a hypoglycemic through a whole day and more? That was going to get real ugly real fast. The LSD was going to be very useful, though. He could use that to see approaching Wraith before they saw him. If he was able to use that to stay out of their way, he might be able to get through this without the Wraith ever even knowing that he was still on the planet. So far, for all the Wraith knew, all four members of SGA-1 made it through the gate before it went down. The LSD could help McKay keep it that way.

Time was a wastin', Rodney realized a moment later. The sun on this world would be setting soon. One by one, he tucked everything back into their proper locations on his vest. The LSD he kept out in his hand, turning it on with a thought that was transmitted through the artificial Ancient Technology Activation gene he carried; the virtue of an injection from Doctor Carson Beckett years before. Several dots appeared on the small screen. Most of the dots were in clusters of two and three. It looked as though the Wraith had fanned out into the woods for some reason. Rodney picked a direction where it seemed that there was a hole he could get through without being seen and struck out.

* * *

Sheppard leveled a cold gaze at Woolsey, Caldwell, and Zelenka in one, fell sweep. He could not believe what he was hearing. He had somewhat expected this reaction from Woolsey and Caldwell. But Zelenka? That one had taken him by surprise.

"Am I seriously the only one in the room who thinks Rodney's still alive out there?" he asked with barely contained anger.

"No," came the deep, rumbling reply from the Satedan with the similar disposition looming near his shoulder.

"Rodney is more than capable," Teyla said in much more measured tones, from somewhere near John's elbow, "I am certain he is managing. To simply leave him on that planet..." She trailed off into a heavy silence. It was clear that she could not bring herself to mention the alternative.

John allowed himself one moment to assess his own reactions to the conversation. His two teammates on either shoulder were really almost symbolic in a way; Sheppard himself was torn between wanting to punch Caldwell in the face, the way Ronon clearly did, or calmly rationalizing things to the Colonel, as Teyla was prepared to do. As angry as he was, though, he knew that a shouting match wasn't going to help McKay. This was one of those times where John needed to feed off of Teyla's calm, not Ronon's impulse.

"No one is questioning his abilities, but let's be realistic," said Caldwell, "we have no idea how many Wraith are on that planet. Even the best of the best couldn't evade a hoard of enemies. And Doctor McKay's skills at evasion are questionable on the best of days."

"Dunno," Ronon rumbled, "he runs pretty fast, when he needs to."

"I gave him SER training myself," Sheppard stated, "he may be a pain in the ass, but when it comes self-preservation Rodney's a champion. And he's resourceful. Trust me, he's still alive."

"You can't know that," said Caldwell.

"And you cannot know that he is dead," said Teyla.

"Exactly!" Sheppard agreed with his teammate.

"Everyone, please," Woolsey broke in, his diplomatic skills clearly kicking in, his tone of voice as even as possible, "this sort of speculation is getting us nowhere. Doctor Zelenka, what is the status of the stargate right now?"

"Atlantis' stargate is fine," said the Czech, "no problems with software or hardware. Gate will dial but… no answer. Like disconnected telephone. The problem is not here. Whatever happened, it happened with gate on P14-626. And we can't fix it from here."

"Meaning that the _Daedalus_ is McKay's only chance," said Sheppard, "and the longer we sit here talking about it, the longer he has to hold out for."

"Rodney may try to repair the gate on P14-626," Zelenka suggested, "if he does, we may be able to dial again. Or he may dial in."

"It's out in the open," said Ronon, shaking his head dubiously.

"There is no way that he would be able to remain at the gate," Teyla agreed.

"Look, there's no way on or off that planet unless we go out there and get him or the Wraith do," said Sheppard, "I'd rather rescue him from a hiding place with some Wraith in the area than from a cocoon in the middle of a hive ship."

"We'd have to postpone our return trip to Earth," said Caldwell.

"So postpone it!" Sheppard exclaimed, throwing his hands wide. "We're talking life and death, here! And Sir, to be frank, this expedition can't afford to loose McKay. By extension, neither can the _Daedalus_. We all know it."

Zelenka muttered something. John's Czech was laughable at best, despite five years of the scientist's frustrated tirades. But the jist was clear; "what are the rest of us brainiacs? Chopped liver?" From the length of the muttering, John imagined that it contained a few more colorful metaphors. Clearly, Radek was torn, in this argument. Rodney was his friend, even though neither of them would ever admit it, openly. He certainly didn't want to see McKay get killed, whatever the circumstances. But for John to have implied that the science staff couldn't possibly get along without Rodney McKay, with only the humble offerings of the rest of the geniuses on the team? That was a blow to Radek's pride.

Inwardly, John sighed. He would have to arrange for some chocolate to find its way to Radek later.

"I tend to agree with Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard," said Woolsey, "though, perhaps not so intensely." He cast a silencing look at Zelenka. "Even though the chances are slim, this is a life and death situation. If we leave Doctor McKay on the planet, it is certain he will die. If we send the _Daedalus_ to rescue him, there is at least a chance he'll still be alive. I think that's worth a couple days' delay getting back to Earth."

"And if McKay does manage to get the stargate on the planet up and running? Or if Doctor Zelenka can find a solution from here?" Caldwell asked. "We'll have gone to a potentially hostile planet for no reason."

"There are no solutions here," Zelenka insisted, crossing his arms over his chest indignantly, "there is nothing wrong with this stargate. Nothing to fix."

Caldwell sighed heavily, clearly mulling it over. John fought the overwhelming urge to throw a hook shot at Caldwell and forced himself to see things from the Colonel's perspective. As CO of the _Daedalus_, Caldwell was responsible for the lives of everyone aboard. He had to weigh those lives and the risk he was exposing them to against the possibility that Rodney, one man, was even still alive to be rescued. It wasn't that Caldwell didn't care or that he wanted McKay dead. Caldwell could be a bastard sometimes, but not that kind of one. It was just numbers; cold, hard numbers.

God! John hated numbers like that! Especially since they made the whole thing sound rational.

"All right," said Caldwell at last, "let's go get our wayward head of science. We'll break orbit in an hour. If you three want to come along, be at the gate room in 30."

With that, the Colonel swept out of the room without even waiting for so much as Sheppard's enthusiastic "Yes, sir!" A moment later and they all heard the tell-tale sound of the _Daedalus_' Asgard transporter beam sweeping him up.

Sheppard wanted to break from the room, head straight for the supply locker, restock his ammo and supplies, and head out. But, even though time was of the essence, he knew he had to make certain it was all right with Woolsey. He looked to the head of the expedition in askance.

"By all means, go," Woolsey said, "I'll keep Major Lorne's team on standby in case we have any contact from Doctor McKay."

"I'll keep monitoring things from the 'gate at this end," said Zelenka, leaving his spot by the wall and practically running from the room.

As one, the remaining three members of SGA-1 rushed from the room.

"That took long enough," Ronon grumbled.

"No argument here," Sheppard agreed.

* * *

It hadn't taken very long for Rodney's luck to start going south. As he hiked along below the ridgeline, one eye on the terrain and the other on the life signs detector, he had watched as the Wraiths' search pattern had taken them almost directly into his path. There was a Wraith just on the other side of the ridgeline right now, in fact, and another off in the distance on the same side as Rodney. He tried to parallel them as best he could, trying not to move any closer to either Wraith, hoping they would miss him.

It would have been easier to walk along the ridgeline itself. He could have made faster time and maybe gotten out in front of them. But the risk of his silhouette being seen against the brighter sky was much greater; too great. Below the ridgeline was best, even if it was slower. There was less risk of being noticed and shot with a stunner, this way. That was another thing that Sheppard's SER training had taught him.

Still, the paths of the two Wraith kept closing in on him, slowly but surely. His own path of safety kept getting narrower and narrower.

Scratch this moving around, thing. He needed to hide and fast.

As if in answer to his prayers, McKay spotted an outcropping of rocks up ahead. It was a steeply sloping pile of boulders and rocks that didn't look terribly stable, but had plenty of nooks and crannies to hide in.

He swallowed hard, thinking of the small, enclosed, dark space he was going to have to squeeze into. With the way his luck was running, one of the Wraith would probably stumble into an unstable section and send the whole thing crashing down on top of him.

"Crushed by rocks or drained by a Wraith," Rodney quietly muttered, "this is so unfair."

Resolutely, he turned off and tucked the life signs detector into its place on his vest and made his way toward the rocks.

The loose boulders and smooth, worn formations formed a small dell on this side of the ridge. Two slopes of rocks tumbled over it on either end of the formation. Rodney began climbing his way up the rocks on the near end, hoping that the large boulder that was in the middle of them would give them some stability. There weren't any promising hiding places on the lower side of the dell, so he had to hope that there was something up higher.

As Rodney scampered over the rocks, practically on all fours into order to keep his balance and stay hidden, one of the large stones that he grasped shifted suddenly. The stone itself didn't fall, but the movement set off a small cascade of motion. A small hail of stones went clattering down the side of the dell.

"No, no, no!" Rodney exclaimed in a whisper, his free hand grabbing at empty air as if to catch the stones as they fell. But there was nothing that he could do. He froze, waiting to see what would happen, watching the wooded space below.

Terror gripped his chest as he spotted a whip of white hair among the green foliage. As the stones came to a rest nearby, the Wraith turned to look his direction and gave a shout. Rodney had just enough warning to duck out of the way of the Wraith's stunner blast. Desperately, he ducked as low as he could behind the boulder.

With one Wraith below him heading his direction and another on the other side of the ridge line, Rodney was trapped in the midst of the unstable rock formation.

A rock and a hard place. The metaphor was just a little too thick for Rodney's liking.


	3. Act 2

Act Two

This was not good. Very, very not good.

Rodney hunkered down behind the large, semi- unstable boulder as far as he could. Every few seconds, a blast from the Wraith's stunner went flying past him. He heard a few impacting on the other side of the rock as well. The blasts might as well have been a flare and by now, the Wraith on the other side of the ridge was probably heading this way to investigate.

Bottom line, Rodney needed to get the hell out of there and fast. But how the hell was he supposed to do that with the stunner fire? As soon as he moved, he was the Wraith's next meal, dammit!

A stunner blast flew past Rodney a little too closely for comfort. Startled, he flinched away from it, pressing himself further into the boulder.

The boulder shifted behind him. Fantastic. Just on the off-chance that he didn't quite understand the gravity of his situation, now he was going to lose his cover, too.

Wait. Gravity! Of course! What an idiot he was! Here he was, perched on top of an unstable rock pile and the Wraith was in the dell below him. And what was he doing? Panicking instead of thinking! His brain was the one resource he had in spades and here he was, not using it.

Rodney summed up every ounce of strength he had, kicked his legs out against the ground, and pressed his back into the boulder as hard as he could. The boulder rocked, teetering on the edge of whatever fragile structure was holding it up. Rodney shifted and tried again.

The boulder came free with a lurch, sending Rodney sprawling on to his back as it rolled away. He had to scramble to keep out of the way as the rest of the rocks around it also broke free and started tumbling down into the dell; a genuine rock-slide.

As the whole side of the rock formation broke free and dumped itself into the dell below, Rodney was sent tumbling down the near end of the rock formation. He crashed through brush and brambles as he rolled down the ridge, barely able to protect his face and head from the offending foliage. He felt several small rocks pelting him on the way down. He finally flopped to a halt amid a stand of bushes and a cascade of rocks and broken plant matter slid to a halt around him.

Slowly, feeling a number of new aches and pains in just about every part of his body, Rodney unfolded himself and pushed himself off the ground. The Wraith stunner fire had ceased and he didn't hear the sound of any other approaching hostile entities. He coughed dust out of his throat as he stood, carefully.

The dust was beginning to settle around the rock-slide. As visibility increased, Rodney made out a single hand reaching up out of the newly-formed pile in the middle of the dell, its clawed fingers limply pointing upward, unmoving.

That wouldn't kill the Wraith. He was probably unconscious, but there was no way that would have killed him.

_Move your ass, McKay!_ Sheppard's voice sounded in Rodney's head again.

Pointedly ignoring how disturbing it was that Rodney had apparently spent so much time with Sheppard that the Lieutenant Colonel was ordering him around _in absentia_, McKay decided that it was sound advice. He took off at full speed in the direction opposite from the rock-slide. He had to get out of sight before the other Wraith got to the top of the ridge line or the one in the rocks woke up. And he still had to find some place to hole up for the night.

Up side; he had survived that particular encounter. Down side; he was still stuck on a planet with a small army of Wraith and no backup and now the damned things were going to be looking for him. And to make matters worse, he had the voice of the single most disaster-prone member of the United States Air Force in history ordering him around inside his brain.

God, this sucked.

* * *

John couldn't help but kick himself. There was an unspoken rule among all the Atlantis 'gate teams; the eggheads were protected at all costs. And now, his was alone on an alien world in hostile territory.

What kind of CO was he, anyway?

Teyla had made an attempt to cheer him up on their way down to the mission ready room; placating words like "it was not your fault" or "you could not have anticipated everything." To be honest, John hadn't bothered to listen. Now that the debate over whether or not to go back out and retrieve Rodney was decided, John was able to focus his entire anger on himself, where he knew in his heart the blame really belonged.

He packed his tac vest a little heavier than normal, stuffing some extra power bars an epi-pen, and some extra pain killers into its pockets. He told himself that it wasn't a matter of whether or not they were going to find Rodney. They were going to find him, no question. But given the physicist's myriad of health problems, John knew he needed to lay in some extra supplies. Rodney would probably be rabidly hungry by the time they found him.

Ronon and Teyla had already been and gone and were making their way to the Gate Room. So it was just John, wallowing in self recrimination, all by himself.

He should have stayed closer to McKay instead of trying to shoot down the dart. He should have pushed Rodney into the event horizon of the stargate instead of away from it. He should have come up with a better plan than just rushing down the street and dialing as fast as they could. He should have-

"Colonel Sheppard!"

Broken out of his self-imposed mental punishment, John turned to the voice near the door. Doctor Jennifer Keller was there, dressed in dark, utilitarian clothing, a heavy-leaden backpack slung over one shoulder.

"I'm coming with you," she said without preamble, making her way across the room to outfit a tac vest.

John stood there, somewhat stupefied, watching her prepare for an off-world mission with a very uncharacteristically reckless zeal. No doubt about it, Keller had cut her teeth on any number of missions through the stargate. But the way she was preparing for this particular excursion was nothing short of frightening. He could have been crazy, but he thought that maybe, just maybe, he had seen her eying the assault rifles.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?" John asked as carefully as he could.

Keller didn't miss a beat, nor did she even turn around to look at John as she spoke. "Positive," she said, "Rodney has a number of health issues that can and will rear their ugly heads if he's left alone and unprepared in the wilderness for a day. I know his medical history better than anyone here. I need to be there."

"That's not really what I mean," John attempted, "we-"

"I've already cleared it with Mister Woolsey and Colonel Caldwell has agreed to bring me along as well."

"That's not it," John attempted again, hovering over her shoulder as she moved about the room, stuffing items into her tac vest. "Listen, Doc. We don't know what we're gonna find out there and-"

"I love him."

She had spun around, looked him in the eye, and said it with such a matter-of-fact tone that Sheppard practically flinched back.

"You can say that I'm needed here," she continued after letting the proclamation sink in for a moment, "you can say I'm not trained enough for this, you can say that you're trying to protect me from seeing something horrible, but you're not leaving me behind while you go off to rescue him." She paused again, as if letting that hang in the air for effect. "I love him. And I'm going to be there when you find him."

"Listen, Doc," said John after a breath, lowering his voice to sound as reasonable as possible. "Jennifer. It isn't just you I'm worried about. I've see what would happen to him if he were to lose you. If something were to happen to you during this mission... I'm not sure I'm willing to lose the both of you like that."

"And what about me, John?" she asked him. "Do you know what would happen to me if I were to lose him? The same thing. You lose one of us, you lose us both. So there's no point in making the distinction. Regardless of what he will have been through by the time we get out there and find him, he's going to be hypoglycemic and god knows what else. I mean, this is _Rodney _we're talking about. He's going to need immediate medical attention, so I'm going. And that's that."

John sputtered for a moment, his mouth flapping open and shut a couple times as he searched for the right thing to say. Finally, he settled for clamping his mouth shut in a frown, pursing his lips together as he held up a finger in Jennifer's face.

"Now I know why you two are dating," he said at last.

"Good," she said, clipping her tac vest closed, "just think of me as the requisite annoying scientist for this mission." She shouldered her pack and turned away, exiting the room. "See you at the gate room in fifteen, then."

As soon as she had left, John pulled one of the bottles of acetaminophen out of his tac vest. Opening the bottle, he shook one pill out and swallowed it dry.

"This must be why they say dating co-workers is bad for your health," he muttered, clipping his P-90 to his vest and following Atlantis' CMO out the door.

* * *

Rodney's head was swimming after his mad dash through the woods, away from the Wraith. Finally, he could run no further and came to a halt, bending over as he took deep gulps of air. His legs felt like rubber and the ground seemed to tilt under him a little. The sensation only got worse when he stood up again.

He knew that feeling. It felt like the beginning of a blood sugar crash. He held a hand up and watched it shake a little, which only confirmed it. He had no choice but to break open the first of his power bars or things were going to get worse, and fast.

Rodney couldn't stop moving, though; not while he was out in the open like this. As he pulled one of the precious comestibles out of his vest and unwrapped it, he forced his legs to continue onward through the woods.

The sun had now sunk low in the sky, hovering as a red orb half above the horizon and half below it. Rodney knew that if he wanted to find a shelter for the night, he would have to do it soon. Otherwise, it would be too dark to find any sort of safe harbor.

The Wraith would be looking for him, now, and that complicated matters. He would have to be more careful to avoid them. As he munched on the power bar with one hand, he pulled out the life signs detector with the other and turned it on. The two Wraith he had left behind at the rock-slide were a fair way off and weren't moving. As Rodney suspected, the rock-slide had not killed the one. Directly opposite those two in direction, two more were wandering at an angle which did not look like they were heading toward Rodney. Perhaps he would get a breather for a few minutes.

He looked up to get his bearings, finding that a new ridge line was in front of him, not far off. What remained of the sunlight was shining up the valley that was formed by the two ridges. Figuring that shelter was most likely to be found in a formation of hills, he started toward the area where the two ridges met.

_Don't put yourself into the middle of a box canyon_, Sheppard's voice pushed its way into his head again, _getting back out again is a pain in the ass, trust me._

"Like I have a choice," Rodney muttered as he walked, absently stuffing the wrapper from his power bar into a pocket. He glanced at the life signs detector again to check on the progress of his adversaries.

What he saw made him halt. The Wraith he had left at the rock-slide still were not moving. But, the other two were now heading directly for him. It represented a nearly one-hundred degree change in course for them.

"What the hell?"

Possibilities moved through Rodney's brain quickly. Had the two at the rock-slide communicated with them and called for help? Did they receive a change in orders from someone else? Or...

"The power readings," he realized, "they're scanning for the power readings. But if the power readings were on a straight line from them, through me, then, being closer to it, I would be picking it up too. Which means, they can't be picking up the power readings. So... they're reading the life signs detector? Oh, come on! This is seriously not fair!"

He had no choice. He couldn't use the life signs detector or the Wraith would be on him in a moment. In retrospect, it was probably why the two from the rock-slide had been closing in on him. Rodney turned off the machine and tucked it back into his pocket before doubling his pace toward what he hoped would be shelter for the night.

Just as the sun disappeared behind the horizon, Rodney reached the point where the two ridges met. He had hiked for about a half an hour which had constituted most, if not all, of a kilometer. Without the life signs detector, he found himself in observational overdrive. The shuffle of his feet through the leafy underbrush sounded horribly loud. Every sound around him gave him a start. His eyes never stopped moving and the forest's long shadows made him jump. His very breath sounded like it was roaring. He felt like he was going to pop out of his skin.

It wasn't long before Rodney found what he was looking for. Hidden amongst the rock formation that was nestled into the corner where the two ridges met were several holes. Most of them weren't terribly deep and were filled with local flora; some kind of invasive thorn bush that reminded him of raspberries. It seemed to cling to whatever surface it could find. Rodney gave a tug at a few of the vines and found that it took quite a bit of force to dislodge them from the surface of the stone.

Finally, in the midst of poking around the rock face, he found a small cave that was suitable as a hiding place. The opening was large enough for him to slip through without too much grief, though the idea of doing so certainly wasn't pleasant. But, beyond the opening, the cave opened up into a fairly comfortable space; not huge, but big enough for a single person to hide inside for a long period of time without being cramped.

Rodney knew he had to conceal the opening. A hiding place was no good if someone could turn a corner and look right at you. The shadowy environment of the cave itself would be a start, but it wouldn't be enough; at least not for Rodney's comfort.

Comfort. That was a joke and a half.

He knew he had to camouflage the opening in a way that wouldn't be glaringly obvious. A camouflage job was no good if it stood out. The thorny raspberry things would probably do nicely, as long as he didn't shred his hands trying to do the job. It was a little like trying to work with barbed wire, but Rodney found that his pocket knife went through them easily enough. Eventually, he gathered enough to make a fairly substantial bundle. A couple of the tendrils he jammed into a crack in the rock just above the cave entrance so they dangled down over it. A few more he dug into the ground right next to the stone at one side of the hole. He tangled them together as if they had grown that way.

Now, came the really, really unpleasant part; getting into the cave.

"All right," he told himself, "nothing to it. It's not as small as it looks. Just a couple moments, twenty centimeters of length, and it opens back out into a nice, wide open space. A nice wide open space about half the size of a 'Jumper cockpit. Oh, god, that is tiny, isn't it."

A noise made him turn in terror, searching the growing darkness. It was somewhere in the trees above, a rustling of leaves. An animal's call split the silence, something that sounded like a nightmarish mix between a cockatiel from hell and a wolverine from out of some Lovecraft novel. And just then, it suddenly occurred to Rodney that Wraith might not have been the only danger in the woods.

He dove for the hole, slithering into it on his belly. As soon as he was all the way inside the cave, he reached an arm back out and pulled the bundle of thorns in after him, carefully arranging them to act as both cover and a spiky deterrent to anything that may want to share his little hiding hole. As soon as that was done, he crab-walked on his hands and feet to the rear of the cave and pressed himself up against the stone.

Rodney's heart was pounding in his chest. His deep breaths echoed off the walls of the enclosed space.

"Wide open fields," he whispered to himself, his voice high, "bright, sunshiny day, wide open fields, gentle breeze. Everything is fine. You're doing just fine."

A few more deep breaths and he began to calm down. The pounding in his chest was probably going to take just a little longer.

"Okay, sheltered for the night. Now what?" Rodney fumbled in his vest for his flashlight. He was having trouble getting his fingers to work properly and it took nearly a minute for him to get it out and find the switch to turn it on.

The light flickered as the hand holding it shook, almost uncontrollably. Rodney's vision seemed to dance at the edges and patches of subtle darkness moved across his sight in small waves. As his earlier panic now fully left him, he felt a hole begin to eat away at his stomach, sending a burning feeling up into his chest.

He was down to four power bars already and he had most of the next day ahead of him, still. But he again had no choice; eat one of them or turn into a mindless, dry-heaving mass of panic.

Sighing, Rodney set the flashlight to the side, opening its built-in tripod and pointing it to the ceiling. He dug around in his vest again and pulled out the first power bar that he found. It was slightly smashed, but the wrapper was in tact. He glanced briefly at the nutrition facts on the label before tearing it open and taking a bite.

"The calorie count in these things better be as high as they say it is," he muttered.

He needed a moment. He needed to stop. Dammit, he needed to _think_ rather than move. He had been stumbling along at break-neck pace all evening, ever since he had watched the stargate tip forward; reacting instead of acting. Maybe that worked for Sheppard and Ronon. Teyla tended to act with slightly more grace than that, though she was also comfortable with living in the moment at need. Not Rodney. His mind was his best asset which meant that coming up with clever plans was how he preferred to roll. He had grudgingly gotten used to being dragged along by the rest of SGA-1 over the years, but he was the follower in those situations, not the decision-maker.

A hiding place was all well and good for holding out. But he was reasonably certain that hunkering down inside a cave all day was out of the question. For one thing, moving was better than staying in one place, even if you were well-hidden. Hiding places worked better at night, when the ones looking for you didn't have the aid of daylight. For another thing, Rodney was reasonably certain that his radio didn't have enough juice to receive transmissions from orbit through rock. The _Daedalus_ would be coming; Sheppard would see to that. But it wouldn't do a lot of good if they couldn't find his sub-coetaneous transmitter or reach his radio. That meant he would have to leave his hiding place come daylight. Back out in the open, he would be back to dodging Wraith, all day. Not his strong suit. That was decidedly Ronon's department.

"Oh, god," Rodney mumbled, horrified, "I gotta start thinking like _Ronon_. This is gonna scar me for life."

What would Ronon do? Ronon would go charging at the first Wraith he came across in the woods, shoot it with his blaster, tackle it from behind, stab it with several hundred knives, and twist its head off with his bare hands.

Again, not Rodney's strong suit. But maybe... something along the same vein?

As he pushed the last bite of the power bar into his mouth and chewed, a particularly Ronon-ish thought came to him; take out the Wraith. Rodney knew he wasn't capable of taking them directly, but someone as clever as he was could certainly come up with something.

A trap! Yes! That was what he needed. Whenever humanity came across something they couldn't do for themselves, they invented a machine to do it for them; airplanes, the light bulb, particle accelerators as big as a city. In this case, it would need to be a trap. He was stuck in a cave all night and he sure as hell wasn't going to be getting any sleep, so he might as well build something. Then, all he would need to do is bait it and for that he had the life signs detector. Yes, that would do nicely.

And then what? So he planned to take out a couple. So what? There were how many Wraith on the planet, all of them looking for him? That was an awful lot of traps to set. Maybe he could do that, sure. He could take out one or two. But then what about the rest?

A trap to take out a couple of the Wraith was only half a plan. Rodney needed more. But what could he do after...

In the middle of that thought, Rodney suddenly heard a couple of large stones clatter to the ground just outside his cave. Quickly, he reached for his flashlight and flipped the switch, plunging the cave back into darkness. Careful not to make any noise, he got onto his belly and peered out of the narrow cave entrance, staying in the dark shadows cast in the moonlight by the barricade of thorns.

As he looked out, a couple more stones tumbled down, just off to the left. Everything else outside was otherwise silent and still. More than likely, it was some animal on the ridge above, moving about or hunting small rodents.

And then, that illusion was shattered when a pair of spiky, black boots thudded down in front of his cave entrance from above. A swish of black leather floated down into existence immediately after. Rodney nearly squeaked out in surprise, but managed to hold his exclamation to a short, sharp gasp and a jump.

As the boots slowly spun around and wandered off, Rodney couldn't help but start shaking. The silver moonlight shone down on a humanoid figure, white-hair, slender, and moving about like a mountain cat sniffing at the air as it stalked its prey.

Rodney's heart started pounding again. The Wraith were right outside his hiding place.


	4. Act 3

Act Three

Time moved at a snail's pace. It seemed to Rodney like he had been holding his breath for hours. He knew it couldn't have been more than a few seconds, though, because he hadn't passed out.

The Wraith was still poking about the area, kicking through brush, poking at a few of the dangling vines of thorns. Several times, his eyes scanned over the rock face and went right over Rodney's little hiding hole. Shaking, Rodney had to fight the urge to push himself back into the cave. It was best to stay still and not draw attention.

Finally, the Wraith nodded to himself and pulled some sort of mechanical device out of a place on his belt. He spoke into it briefly and a moment later the unmistakable sound of a Wraith dart faded into existence overhead. A beam shone down and scooped up the Wraith a moment later.

As the sound of the dart faded back into the sky, Rodney released a shaky sigh of relief, his head dropping down into his arms.

That had been far too close.

Rodney allowed himself a moment to just lay there, face down, breathing deeply to settle himself and contemplating what might have happened if he had been just a few minutes later getting into his little cave. There was no doubt in his mind that he would not be alive right now.

It was probably ten minutes before he felt safe enough to move again. Slowly, hands still shaking despite his best efforts, Rodney pushed himself up and back into the cave. He groped around in the darkness for the flashlight again. When it turned on, he couldn't help but flinch at the sudden light.

Too much light. It was too much light. It was like shining a beacon out in the night. Scrambling, he started piling small stones up at the base of the entry hole to the cave, behind the wall of thorns. When that still wasn't enough, he struggled out of his tac vest and took off his jacket. He wadded it up and used it to cover the remainder of the hole. After that was done, he found that he still couldn't stop fidgeting.

He got up and paced the tiny space. It was barely large enough to allow two steps from one end to the other; in other words, way too damn small. There were several thousand pounds of stone over his head and no real indication of how stable it was. Even so, going back outside was still ten times more terrifying.

Stuck between rock and... well... more rock. God, this was a nightmare!

"There's no way," he said to himself, voice cracking a little in panic, "there is no way I am going to make it through this. Thinking like Ronon. Thinking like Sheppard. What was I thinking, thinking like that? Survive, evade and... god! What the hell is that R for!"

Feeling a headache coming on, he pressed the heel of one hand into an eye socket, still pacing back and forth.

"Okay, okay, okay," he chanted like a mantra, "think, think, think, think, think. Gotta come up with a plan to get through the day tomorrow. Something that gets me out of this damn tomb. God knows I'm gonna go crazy enough just getting through the night."

_You need to get some sleep, Rodney_. Sheppard's voice was in his head again. And, he might add, saying something incredibly stupid. _You're going to be no good if you don't get some rest. It's what you gotta do in situations like this; take care of yourself and stay sharp._

"Yeah right," Rodney muttered to the voice that was reciting Sheppard's training lessons, "that may be all well and good for you, Colonel, but us mere mortals who are _panicking_ don't exactly have that option!"

Rodney stopped pacing, dropped his hands to his sides and looked skyward.

"Great," he said, "now I'm talking _back_ to the tiny Sheppard inside my brain."

With a long-suffering sigh, Rodney massaged his temples and allowed his legs to crumple, depositing him on the ground. He rested his elbows on his knees and dropped his head forward, stretching out the tense muscles in his neck.

Those were never going to un-knot themselves again. Ever.

Where had he been in his thought process before that Wraith had scared the living shit out of him? Oh yes. Trap. And then what?

Just setting a trap and taking out a Wraith or two was the equivalent of poking a sleeping lion with a cattle prod and then waiting around to see what it would do. He needed to figure out what to do after that. What he needed was an advantage.

And all of a sudden, it came to him. God, he had been so dense! What had brought them to P14-626 to begin with? Energy readings! Energy readings of the type that, in the Pegasus Galaxy, you only found in Ancient facilities. If there was anything that Rodney McKay knew what to do with, it was an Ancient facility with all sorts of interesting devices and equipment. And, Ancient tech was the one thing on this god-forsaken planet that he would be able to use and the Wraith wouldn't.

He needed to find the source of those energy readings.

How the hell was he going to go about doing that? Without using the scanner, there was no way he could track that down. He needed to be able to use _something_ or this was a fool's hope.

"Wait," he said aloud, his fingers snapping in thoughtful reflex, "it's a larger energy signature than life signs. So it should be easier for the scanner to pick up. The Wraith were tracking the LSD because I was using it at full power to pick them up. If I use it at a lower power instead, I may be able to read that energy signature without giving myself away."

_How certain is 'may be able to?'_ Sheppard's voice pushed its way in again.

Rodney sighed, dropping his head to his knees again. "Damned if I know," he found himself admitting. It was a moment of weakness, to be sure; Rodney McKay admitting that he didn't know something. It didn't really matter that he was really only admitting it to himself.

Why the hell was Sheppard in his head, anyway? Last time it had been Sam Carter and that was _way_ more pleasant. Couldn't he even get his own girlfriend's voice in his head?

Jennifer. She was probably freaking out by now. Small, slight, and even less fighting ability than Rodney had. But still, he wouldn't have been surprised if she had pinned Sheppard to the wall and demanded a debrief as soon as the rest of SGA-1 had come back Rodney-less. Ronon might have tried to stop her, but she probably had some sort of medical paralytic agent ready for him.

Oh yeah. Rodney was hopelessly in love.

"Huh," he chuckled with a small, crooked smile on his face, "if I don't make it back alive, she'll kill me. All right, then, McKay. Time to man-up. As soon as it's light enough out, clear the road a little bit, then find that Ancient facility."

The rest of the night was spent in and out of similar babble as Rodney used what resources he had to design a trap capable of taking out a Wraith. He ventured out a couple times to find some large branches or some strong vines, but most of the night he was holed up in the tiny cave. Another of the power bars was gone before sun up, but he had several deadly-looking sharpened branches cobbled together into bundles before then.

By the time the sun shone orange above the horizon and Rodney ventured out to begin moving again, he was short on sleep and even shorter on food, but a lot longer on determination and plan.

* * *

As she watched the stars whizz past outside the starboard-facing window in the _Daedalus_' mess hall, Jennifer Keller realized that she had been perfectly horrible to John Sheppard. The Kindle that she had thought to bring along to pass the day-long trip sat unused on the metal table before her. She stared at the window with a listless expression, absently fingering her radio earpiece with the hand that her head was leaning in as she slouched in the uncomfortable chair.

The waiting was terrible; the curse of inter-stellar distance. Rodney would have been able to give her exact numbers on the amount of time and energy it was going to take to reach P14-626. But, of course, he wasn't there. He was busy running for his life on the distant planet, possibly drained of life already.

And that was the moment that she realized that she had treated Sheppard badly. The man had been trying to spare her that exact experience; finding the man she loved abandoned as a lifeless husk following a Wraith feeding. She had seen the results of a feeding before, of course. As the CMO of the Atlantis expedition, she could hardly have avoided the sight of it. But somehow, the thought of it being Rodney...

As quietly as she could, she suppressed the sob that was attempting to find its way out of her throat.

"The waiting sucks," Sheppard's voice suddenly popped into existence behind her. She spun around in her chair to find him standing just a few feet away, a mug full of something in hand. "Mind if I join you?"

"Please do, Colonel," she said gesturing to one of the other chairs, "it'll save me from going bibbeldy."

"Bibbeldy?" Sheppard asked, folding himself into the metal chair. "Can't say that's one I've heard before. Sounds like it fits, though."

"Teyla and Ronon?"

"Telya is in her bunk, meditating. Ronon's disrupting traffic patterns all over the ship with a run. They're both trying to say that they're fine, but they're both dealing with the stress, too. Never figured you for the brooding type, though."

"Colonel, about earlier, back on Atlantis..."

Sheppard put up a hand and waved her off. "Don't go there, Doc, it's fine," he said, "I'm freakin' out, too."

"Yeah, but you're not running around threatening air force officers with bodily harm when you have no skill to back it up."

"Colonel Caldwell might say differently," Sheppard said with a nonchalant shrug, "we're all worried, Doc. Some of us just have different training. To be honest, I'd be worried about you if you _weren't_ freakin' out right now."

Jennifer gave a faint smile as the unspoken passed between them. Rodney had had his heart broken before, by the botanist Katie Brown, thanks to a simple miscommunication. He had moped about it for weeks. And his feelings for Jennifer were obviously far more intense. Sheppard was actually worried about what would happen if Jennifer chose to break his friend's heart. The members of SGA-1 were notoriously protective of each other. And the other three circled the wagons around Rodney faster than you could blink.

"Do you really think he has a chance?" Jennifer asked Sheppard. "Out there, on his own like that?"

Sheppard looked like he was about to give his automatic response, but he seemed to bite it back at the last moment. He considered for a moment, then leaned forward, resting his elbows on the table.

"A chance? Sure. Everyone has a chance and Rodney is more capable than people give him credit for. But, honestly, it's not the greatest chance in the world. It wouldn't be for me, either. I wasn't about to leave him back there without at least trying to go after him, but..."

"You think we should go in prepared for the worst."

Sheppard bobbed his head back and forth noncommittally. It was painfully obvious that he was wrestling with his own doubts and hopes. "I think... that I'm not ready to think that yet. But I know we'll find him alive and kicking." He paused, giving a wry smile. "Probably screaming, too."

The corners of Jennifer's mouth twitched up into the faintest of smiles. Then she shook her head as it faded just as quickly. "So... you think his odds are terrible, but you still know that he'll make it."

"Bet'cher ass."

"That doesn't make any sense."

Sheppard shrugged. "Nah, it makes perfect sense. This is Rodney we're talking about. Have you seen anyone laugh in the face of the odds like he does? Besides, when he needs to, he can run really, really fast."

In spite of herself, a chuckle bubbled up from Jennifer's stomach and pushed its way out through her mouth. "His legs are perfectly healthy, at that," she said.

"Look, Doc, I was freakin' out before, too," Sheppard said after they had both calmed down somewhat, "I didn't want you along at first, for obvious reasons. But now that I think about it, I'm glad you're along. We're probably going to need you."

"Do you know how much food he had along with him?"

Sheppard gave a non-committal grimace. "He usually stashes some extra power bars in his vest. I can't imagine that he has more than… five or six? Other than that, though? Should be just water. He gets testy when he hasn't eaten in a while, but I gotta admit that I've never seen him go this long. What can we expect?"

"If he's careful, that and adrenaline may get him through," Jennifer answered, "but it's going to be bad when he crashes. He may be incoherent or dry-heaving, depending on how long it's been since he ate."

"It can really get that bad?"

"Rodney tends to be pretty careful about it. I think we can count on him managing it fairly well. Just to be sure, I've got something to boost his blood sugar levels when we find him."

A long moment of silence passed between them as they both stared out the window at the passing stars.

"After this, I need you to read me into that whole hypoglycemia thing," said Sheppard.

"Sure," Jennifer said, absently.

* * *

The sun rose on P14-626 without so much as another noise moving around outside of Rodney's cave. He wasn't sure if the local wildlife sensed his presence and steered clear, but there wasn't so much as a squeak of a rodent or the flap of wings of something nocturnal on the hunt. Rodney was okay with this, since it meant fewer threats to have to deal with; he had enough to worry about.

Once it was light out, he was on the move once more. A part of him was glad not to be stuck in the tiny cavern any longer, with its tiny space and its thousands of kilos of rock over his head and god knew what else threatening to come down on him. But then again, a part of him wanted to just stay holed up in there, hidden, in the sanctuary that had gotten him through the night.

During the course of the night, while he was working on his little project of stone knives and bear skins – minus the bear skins – he had had to eat two more of his power bars. That left him with two. He ate one of them as he began his hike toward the power source, hoping that it would steel him for the day ahead. He hiked along, making a bee-line for the power reading, scanner running on as low a level of power as he could manage and still pick anything up. It was nerve-wracking to have to be blind to the presence of the Wraith, but he didn't have a choice.

It was several hours into the day before Rodney's scanner began to show faint shadows of much smaller readings. They flitted in and out of range and flickered randomly, but they were definitely life signs. It wasn't good enough to track precisely where they were or where they were going, but he knew he needed to keep away from them. And so, whenever one popped up in front of him, he turned his path 90 degrees to avoid it. Soon, however, it meant that he was heading in circles.

The faint, flickering life signs kept popping up in a fairly consistent wall between Rodney and the power source. He had hoped not to have to do it, but it was time to set his little trap and get past one of them. He chose a spot with a lot of cover and some large, leafy trees and set to work as rapidly as he could, hoping that he could get set up before he was found.

* * *

The Wraith Blade known as Stalker was proud of his record. No human had ever escaped him. There was no culling in which Stalker was present that a human meant to be fed upon had escaped. His hive depended upon him to find the unfindable. And now, this human from Atlantis was attempting to evade him. Ha! An Atlantean he may be, but no Ancient and certainly no match for his skill.

The human had gone the better part of the past day evading capture and Stalker had had to admit that perhaps he had been killed by some wild animal. However, that was disproven around mid-day when others had began to report a weak signal popping up here and there, moving seemingly at random. And now, it had stopped moving.

The human had finally made a mistake and it would prove to be his last. Stalker claimed the right of the kill for himself. He was looking forward to drinking in the human's disbelief and despair.

Stalker's instruments showed the signal of the human's device getting stronger as he approached. The trees had thickened and Stalker had to tear some thorns apart to move into the area. Perhaps the human was under the foolish impression that the thick woods would be a suitable hiding place. Ultimately, it didn't matter, though; the human would die for what it had done to Red Star the day before and his death would sustain Stalker in turn.

Soon, the Wraith was nearly on top of the signal. It was steady, now, not flickering or fading in or out. Stalker looked about the relatively open space, puzzled. He should have been close enough to see the human.

His boot ran into something, causing him to halt. Slowly, he brushed some leaves off of the hard object and found there a small device of Ancient origin, laying on the ground. He tilted his head, confused.

And that was when the world exploded. Something whooshed through the air, sounding heavy-leaden. Stalker whipped around just in time for a bundle of wooden stakes, weighed down with stones and suspended from something long and white, to swing into him, pushing its way through his chest and carrying him along. Stalker felt himself impact with a tree and everything went black.

* * *

Rodney was shaking. He sat in his perch in the tree for a long moment, breathing deeply. It felt like he stared at his handiwork for an hour, but he knew it wasn't more than a few seconds. Still shaking, he carefully lowered himself from the tree branch and ran across the clearing. He scooped up the ancient scanning device and turned it off, shoving it into his vest before drawing his Baretta and cautiously approaching the motionless Wraith.

The thing was pinned against the tree, Rodney's bundle of stakes having driven through his chest, pushed onward by the mass of the stones he had included at the back of the bundle. The emergency bandages he had used as the ropes for the pendulum now hung slack from the tree limb above.

For several long moments, the Wraith remained lifeless and for a moment, Rodney dared to think that perhaps, maybe, he had managed to kill it.

That illusion was shattered when the Wraith suddenly sprang to life again, just as Rodney got within reach. The Wraith's feeding hand shot out and Rodney jumped back in a panic, squeezing off a shot from his gun as he cringed. He continued to shoot, over and over, emptying his clip into the thing. His finger kept squeezing the trigger a few times afterward, for good measure.

Rodney paused with his eyes closed, as if to open them would break whatever magic spell was keeping him alive. Finally he cracked one eye open, then the other, to look at the Wraith. More than one of his shots had landed in the Wraith's head, finally ending the thing in a grizzly mess. There was no sign of the Wraith regenerating.

"Oh, god," Rodney realized, "that was loud. Really, really loud. Gotta go. Go now."

He turned to start running the direction the Wraith had come from, hoping against hope that he had time to get through the Wraith line. At the last moment, he paused, grabbed the Wraith's stunner, and then high-tailed it as fast as his legs could carry him.

He ran until his legs and his lungs burned. He crashed through branches and brambles, and underbrush, heedless of the scrapes and scratches they were leaving on his face and arms. He ran until he could simply run no further, then jogged to a halt in the midst of a small clearing, surrounded on all sides by high trees and thick bushes. He doubled over, putting his hands on his knees and sucking wind noisily.

"Holy crap," he wheezed, "I can't believe I just did that. What the hell was I thinking?"

As soon as he had enough breath, he stood up straight again and checked the scanner, using the least amount of power he could. The energy reading was still present, and he saw no life signs in his immediate area. He sighed in relief.

"Okay, okay, okay," he said, half-chanting it to himself like a mantra. He began to pace the small clearing in anxiety. "Just poked the dragon with a hot poker. And the dragon is gonna be pretty pissed."

He couldn't help it. He starting laughing. "Oh, god! What was I thinking? They're gonna hunt me down and suck every little bit of energy out of my body! I couldn't just stay nice and safe in the cave. Oh, no, no, no! I shoulda just stayed low and waited it out!"

_Knock it off, Rodney_, Sheppard's voice was in his head again. _What's done is done. What's your next step?_

"It doesn't freaking _matter_ now, does it?" Rodney asked the open air. "And I'm talking back to the fake Sheppard in my head again! Brilliant! Panicking. I'm panicking after my plan went exactly as planned. Why am I doing that?"

Slowly, Rodney raised his hands to look at them. His fingers were shaking and try as he might, he could not get them to stop. He was fairly certain the adrenaline from springing his trap had worn off.

"Are you kidding? Blood sugar low that fast? I only have one power bar left."

And just like that, his stomach tied itself into a knot. That power bar became simultaneously the most desired part of his gear and a nausea-inducing device of torture. He wasn't sure if eating it would help or would make him puke. He knew that feeling, knew what it meant.

One power bar to get him through however long the afternoon was on this damn planet. And that was if the _Daedalus_ was able to locate his sub-coetaneous transmitter and transport him right away. It would be longer if Sheppard and the rest of the team actually had to find him.

And what the hell did that R stand for, anyway? It was still nagging him and it kept coming back at the most inopportune moments!

And that was something that he shouldn't even be worrying about, clearly. That meant that he wasn't thinking right and that needed to stop right now if he was going to get through the next few hours.

Decision made, he tore into his last power bar and began to munch on it slowly as he resumed his hike.

* * *

Sheppard swept on to the deck of the _Daedalus_ bridge, Teyla, Ronon, and Jennifer in tow. In the captain's seat, Caldwell sat grim-faced, yet seemingly impassive, staring at a readout on the bridge's HUD. It depicted a planet and a bright point in its orbit, rendered in wire-frame CGI.

"You wanted to see us, sir?" Sheppard asked as he approached.

"There's been a development," Caldwell said. Never taking his eyes off the HUD, he indicated the screen with a point of his finger. "That's a reading of P14-626 from our long-range sensors."

"That a Wraith ship?" Ronon rumbled out.

"I'm afraid so," Caldwell confirmed, "hive ship. it's taken up a geo-stationary orbit around the planet, over the area near the stargate."

"It must have come after we left," said Teyla, "I did not sense any Wraith in orbit or on the planet until they came through the stargate."

"Well, that certainly makes our job harder," said Sheppard.

"More to the point," said Caldwell, "it doesn't bode well for Doctor McKay."

"Sir, you're not thinking of...?"

"The thought did cross my mind," Caldwell admitted, "but no. We're most of the way there already, we might as well see what we can do. But I am going to change the plans slightly."

"How?" asked Ronon.

"Well, for one thing, we're going to be entering orbit opposite the hive ship, so we can stay in the sensor shadow of the planet."

"Wouldn't that put us on the other side of the planet from Rodney?" Jennifer asked, tentatively.

"Yes," said Caldwell, "which is going to prompt us to do some fancy footwork with the teleporters. I've got Hermiod on the problem, now. He's trying to push their limits, but there are some risks involved."

"Such as?" Teyla asked.

"To my understanding, if Hermiod ends up pushing the range too far, or if anything goes wrong, your molecules could be scattered across the atmosphere."

Sheppard swallowed, trying to put as good a face on it as possible. "I could think of worse ways to go out," he said with a nervous-looking smirk. "What else?"

"Once you're on the planet, you have four hours to find Doctor McKay," said Caldwell, "I don't want to give the Wraith any more time than that to detect us."

"Wait a second," said Sheppard, "if we can't teleport close to the gate to begin with, it may take us that long just to get to the area!"

"Like I said, Hermiod is working on the problem," said Caldwell, "we're still several hours out. I'm sure he'll have something by then. Either way, four hours is all I can risk."

Caldwell turned around to look Sheppard in the eye as Jennifer and the rest of SGA-1 drew in closer to their leader.

"You should all be ready in case there's nothing we can do in that amount of time," said Caldwell, "because once four hours are up, with or without you and Doctor McKay, the _Daedalus_ is heading back to base."


	5. Act 4

Act Four

Rodney hiked for a couple hours before he really started to run into trouble again. It wasn't long before he was constantly moving among the thicker bushes and using trees and rocks as breaks to line of sight. The Wraith were getting thicker in the area and every direction he turned, he eventually would run into one.

Presently, Rodney had his back pressed up against a particularly large tree, heart once again thumping in his chest, as a couple of Wraith wandered in the area a little less than a quarter mile away. He held his purloined stunner in hand, clutched tightly to his chest.

Apparently, they didn't know he was there, however. Soon, they began to move off in opposite directions, each continuing some sort of pre-arranged search pattern.

The power readings were still further beyond the Wraith. He needed to get through, somehow. Once again, Rodney began to formulate a plan.

* * *

Far above the planet, hovering right at that magical distance which kept an object directly over the same spot on the planet's surface, the Wraith hive ship lazily orbited. It remained blissfully unaware of the hyperspace window that opened directly opposite it, perfectly placed in the planet-shadow of its sensors.

The _Daedalus_ exited hyperspace and the window closed behind it. In short order, it, too, was orbiting the planet, staying directly opposite the hive ship to avoid detection.

Aboard the ship's bridge, Colonel Caldwell studied the HUD for a moment, his eyes quickly scanning the readouts.

"Any indication that they've seen us?" he asked his XO.

The officer shook his head. "No sir, they're not making any moves. Looks like all their attention is on the planet."

"That's both good and bad," said Sheppard from his place near Caldwell's shoulder.

Caldwell nodded in grim agreement. "Let me know the instant that there's any change," he instructed his XO as he stood up from his chair to face Sheppard and his team. He tapped the earpiece of his radio. "Engineering, are we ready?"

"I believe we're as ready as we can be, sir," came the tremulous voice of Lieutenant Novak, "but Hermiod would like to stress again that stretching the transporter this far is still a significant risk." There was a rush of air from her microphone and Sheppard could picture her cheeks blowing out in apprehension. "I mean, we have never pushed the limits on line of sight like this. This really might not be-"

"Colonel Caldwell," came the otherworldly contralto of the ship's resident Asgaard.

"Hermiod?"

"As Lieutenant Novak said, we are as ready as we can be."

"Roger that. Stand by. Okay, Sheppard, you have four hours. Either find McKay or get the stargate up and running again. If you can't do either one in that time, we need to be done, here."

"Any reading from Rodney's subcutaneous transmitter?" Sheppard asked, directing his question at the _Daedalus_' XO.

"No sir," came the reply, "there's all sorts of energy spikes from the area that are messing with sensor readings from down there."

"Worth a shot," Sheppard said with a grimace, "okay, sir, we'll keep in radio contact as long as we can. Get us as close to the 'gate as possible. We'll start looking from there and maybe get some answers as to why it's been shut down."

Caldwell nodded, then keyed his earpiece again. "Hermiod, we're ready up here. Put them down as close to the stargate as you can manage."

"Understood," the alien replied.

And then, Sheppard and the rest of the team were surrounded in a bright flash of light and were gone.

* * *

He had circled all the way around the thing, by now. Rodney was certain of it. As the Wraith had become more and more numerous in the area, he had switched to a intermittent use of the scanner to get an idea of where the power readings were coming from. The Wraith weren't being terribly quiet, so he had found that he could hear them coming, anyway. And why risk the power output from the device if all he needed to do was triangulate?

He had taken enough readings, so he now knew which way he needed to go. Getting there was the kicker. He needed to get through, somehow, and hope that the Wraith had not already found the place, first.

Rodney was low on resources. That was, after all, the sort of annoying thing that happened after being left alone, unprepared, for an entire day. He had tried to come up with a plan, but all he really had at his disposal was the Wraith stunner and the last clip in his Beretta.

The only thing for it was to divide and conquer.

And so, he had spent the better part of an hour looking for a likely target. And by "likely target" the best he could hope for was "alone." Because, really, none of them were terribly likely to go down easily. They were Wraith, after all. Ultimately, he decided on using the stunner for no other reason than it had more shots. It wouldn't kill his target, but he knew it would at least go down. And if he missed, it wasn't a waste of a bullet.

And, yeah, he would probably miss. Stupid planet. Stupid Wraith. Stupid stunner.

It was about an hour before he found the best candidate; a Wraith wandering the woods alone, engrossed in a scanning device of some kind. Rodney watched him as he crouched in the midst of a stand of shrubs, holding his breath as the Wraith came closer. Careful to keep it out of any stray rays of sunlight, Rodney poked the muzzle of the stunner out through the shrubbery and took aim at the Wraith. When the alien seemed to take no notice of him, Rodney took a slow breath and squeezed the trigger.

The gout of blue energy jumped forth and sped toward his target at break-neck speed. The Wraith barely had enough time to look up before it hit him in the chest. The Wraith stumbled and moved sluggishly, but did not go down. Gritting his teeth and letting out a terrified whimper, Rodney pulled the trigger again. And again. And again.

Finally, the Wraith went down. Rodney wasn't sure how many of his shots had actually hit the Wraith, but he sort of didn't give a crap. He was in motion right away, stooping down just long enough to grab the scanning device that the Wraith had been consulting and the stunner from his holster.

And then Rodney was running again. It wouldn't be long before the Wraith recovered, so he had a narrow window of opportunity.

He knew the direction. He just had to reach that power source.

* * *

Sheppard hadn't been able to help but count his fingers and toes when his team had materialized on the planet. He wasn't an expert on the tones of voices of aliens, but there had been something very unsettling about Hermiod's voice right before they had teleported down.

However, all four of them managed to come out in tact in the middle of the woods about an hour or so walk from the stargate. They had gotten their bearings and started hiking at once.

Sheppard had expected to have to let Keller set the pace. She wasn't out of shape, by any means. Being a doctor, she clearly knew staying in shape was important. But she also wasn't a soldier and wasn't usually in the field. However, he found now that he was actually having to keep a good pace to keep up with her. As much as he wanted to find McKay and leave as rapidly as possible, he was dubious as to whether or not she could keep the pace for long.

Thankfully, they reached the village where the stargate was located without incident. Ronon scouted the town and quickly found that the Wraith had moved on from it over the course of the day. After he returned to retrieve the rest of the team, they made straight for the 'gate.

"Well, that explains that," said Sheppard surveying the downed ring.

"Safety protocols," Ronon stated, tossing an errant stone into the center of the ring, "won't activate if there's no where to exit."

"Rodney explained that once," said Keller with a shudder, "said that anything coming into a hard surface would get vaporized by the impact."

"Can it be righted?" Teyla asked.

"Probably," said Sheppard, "but not in the time we have and probably not without Rodney."

"Planet's deserted anyway," Ronon said, his tone shifting darker, if that was even possible, "not fond of grave-robbers. I say we leave it."

"Whatever makes ya happy, big guy," Sheppard agreed, "we got three hours left. Start tracking our egghead. See if you can find any sign of him." Ronon nodded and wandered off to try and start sorting out all of the various tracks and prints in the area.

"He may attempt to return to the 'gate," suggested Teyla, "after all, it is the last place where we knew where he was."

"What if he can't return?" said Keller, "if he's running from the Wraith, he might be cut off. Or he could be hurt. We should go find him."

Sheppard nodded. "I tend to agree," he said, reaching for his radio, "_Daedalus,_ this is Sheppard."

"We're having trouble hearing you, Colonel," came the broken and static-ridden reply from Caldwell, "still getting a bunch of energy readings in the area."

"Understood, sir," Sheppard replied, "the stargate is face-down, here. There's no way we can get it upright in the time we have. We're gonna track McKay from here. Any sign of his transmitter yet?"

"None," Caldwell answered.

"What about those energy readings? Can you localize them?"

"Give us a minute." Sheppard imagined Caldwell nodding to his XO. "What for?"

"If I know McKay, that's where he'll head. I think it's our best bet."

"Understood." There was a long, static-filled pause. "Ten degrees Northwest, about 4 klicks from you. Best we can do."

"All right, got it. I'll check in again every klick as we're able." He thumbed his radio off again and motioned Keller and Teyla along. "Hey Chewie!" he yelled to Ronon as they began moving again. "Let's get a move on!"

Ronon was already ahead of them and fell into step as they came up along side. "McKay's tracks head this direction by themselves. He left here alone."

"Then he left here alive!" Keller said with excitement.

"Let's hope he stayed that way," said Sheppard.

* * *

There wasn't a damn thing in the area! All that hiking, all the evading the Wraith for an entire day, all to reach the center of the energy readings and find nothing at all. Zero. Zilch. The big null set.

"This is so not fair," Rodney muttered to himself, sourly punching the controls on his scanning device again, a little bit harder than was strictly necessary. "I'm practically standing on top of whatever this thing is. Where is it?"

He looked up at the small, bald hill that was nearby, poking its crown up out of the tree line. He had already circled the thing twice and now it was the only place in the area that he hadn't checked. He didn't like the idea of leaving the cover of the trees, especially since there were so many Wraith in the area, but it was the last thing left to him. Keeping in a somewhat comically low crouch, he crept up the shallowest side of the hill and made his way up to the top.

Once above the tree line, he took a cursory glance around. There seemed to be nothing but grass in all directions, matted together by a few hundred years of undisturbed history. The ground was springy under his feet because of it. There were mountains in nearly every direction, shot through with sharp valleys and crumbling cliff faces; Ronon's fjords. Rodney looked about at each mountain, curiously, wondering again what could have caused them to form.

And then, something strange caught his attention; the out-of-place fjords were all pointing roughly the direction of the bald hill.

"Huh," Rodney said thoughtfully, turning again to all directions to confirm. "What would do that?"

And then, he nearly stumbled as the nature of the ground changed beneath one of his feet. It was suddenly firmer, less springy.

"The hell?" he asked aloud, kicking at it with his toe. Whatever it was had a discernible edge. He crouched down and began to pull the grasses away from it. It wasn't long before his fingers hit metal. He worked faster, uncovering the object with excitement.

When all was cleared away, he found there, sticking out of the grasses, the unmistakable form of an Ancient door trigger. It was dark and one of the control crystals had been broken, sheared off right at the edge of its socket.

"And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why I bring spares," Rodney said to himself, taking the pliers out of his tool kit and removing the remains of the damaged crystal. Those, he pocketed. Then, he took out one of his spares and slid it into place, hoping that by some miracle the trigger was still getting power. Immediately, the trigger lit up the three crystals, glowing a cold blue-white in the warm light of late afternoon. "Okay. We're in business." Rodney put his tools away, then waved a hand over the trigger.

Instantly, the ground fell away beneath him, sending him tumbling into darkness. He didn't plummet straight down, but rolled uncontrollably along a rough slope. Finally, he came to a halt, face down, on a flat surface. He groaned, a new myriad of aches and pains adding themselves to the long list Rodney had been accruing over the course of the day.

"This sucks," he said, slowly pushing himself up into a kneeling position. "Who the hell would put a door there, facing down?" After a quick pat-down to make sure nothing was broken, he found his flashlight and thumbed it on. "Huh," he said, looking around.

He was kneeling on a landing between two flights of stairs. The one he had tumbled down led straight down from the opening above. The other one led further down into the darkness. It reminded Rodney quite a bit of a storm cellar, in a lot of ways, or a bunker. The geometric shapes in the grating of the stairs were unmistakably of Ancient design.

"Okay," said Rodney, climbing painfully to his feet, "nothing of interest outside. Which leaves only dark, old and god-knows-what-ahead down that way. Just my luck. Okay, no problem. Done this sort of thing before. Just, go on in and find the lights."

Shining his flashlight ahead, Rodney went down the stairs and into the darkness. The light from the open door above grew dim the further on he went. The stairs weren't very long, only enough to account for a story or so, and dumped him out in a large room. As he shined the flashlight about, Rodney came to the realization that it was laid out not much unlike the control room of Atlantis.

"Finally, a break!" he sighed, making his way to the console that he presumed was power control. It was covered in dust which he blew away. He instantly regretted doing so as the dust rose about him in a cloud, setting off his allergies and making him sneeze and cough. He waved a hand back and forth in the air, trying to clear it. When it did, he gave the console the once-over, checking for any obvious damage, then chose the control he figured was the "on button."

The room lit up obligingly, making Rodney squint for a moment. With the place powered up, he had a clearer picture of the room. For all the world, it looked like the layout of the Atlantis control room. However, in the front row of consoles, in place of the DHD, was a curious looking set of controls. And in front of that, where there should have been a large window, it looked like some sort of metal shielding had been placed. Rodney glanced around its edges and noticed some scrapes and scuffs indicating a tight fit, but shielding that moved.

"Okay, that's a little different. The Ancients had energy shields. Why make something out of metal?" Curiously, he made his way down to the first row of consoles. The weird interface he left alone for the moment as he looked for a control for the shielding. And, since he knew it was incredibly stupid to remove shielding without an indication that it was safe to do so, he looked for whatever readout might indicate that it was. The only thing he found was some sort of heat indicator, but he needed to convert it to Celsius or Kelvin in order to be certain it was safe. There didn't seem to be any other indicators, so this was the crystal that he jacked his tablet into.

It was pretty hot behind the shield, not really a vacation spot. But it was within an acceptable level so as not to fry him instantly. Rodney decided to risk lifting the shield. He found the control and pressed it.

The metal shielding wrenched free of the place it had been sitting for thousands of years with a horrendous metal-on-metal whine. The room began to warm as soon as it was opened, revealing a red-orange glow. Rodney grimaced and squinted back against the heat, but peered out the newly-revealed window none the less. His mouth fell open.

In the place where a gate room should have been, there was a massive hole in the ground, glowing red-hot around its edges. The glow increased in brightness as Rodney's gaze descended into the hole, finally ending in a soft yellow-white as far off as he could see. He doubted that even that was the bottom. The pit had quite obviously been artificially dug and a network of pipes and conduits lined the sides, all glowing with heat.

"Ah," said Rodney, "that's why the metal shielding. It's in case something goes wrong with their geothermal power supply." He gave a wry grimace. "No ZedPM today, I guess."

* * *

Ronon couldn't help but marvel at it. The smartest man in two galaxies was also both the dumbest and the luckiest he had ever known. How could a person function like that? It just wasn't right.

This he pondered as he stared down at the three energy bar wrappers and rough wood shavings that littered the floor of the small cave he was standing in. The man had actually left evidence of his presence behind in the middle of what was most likely a situation where he was being pursued. He had also failed to re-camouflage his hiding place after he had left it, though he had clearly hidden it while he had been there.

Shaking his head and dreading the extra wilderness training sessions with McKay that were likely to follow this fiasco, he reached down and scooped up the wrappers, then kicked the wood shavings into a dark corner of the cave. He then crawled back out of the cave and unfolded himself back to his full height, Teyla and Keller flanking him to either side of the cave entrance. Sheppard was further ahead, keeping watch.

"He was here, all right," he said, handing the wrappers to Keller.

"This place wouldn't have been my first choice," Sheppard said, anxiously surveying the high, rocky hills on three sides of them, "he must have had a pretty good reason to come this way."

"From the looks of it, he spent the night in there," Ronon added, reaching down to place the make-shift camouflage over the cave entrance again. He decided to let Sheppard continue to be the one to voice the disbelief he himself was feeling. If it had just been Sheppard and Teyla there, he might have said something. But with Keller along for the ride, saying anything about how exceedingly dumb her boyfriend and his own former rival for her affections was might not be such a good idea.

Ronon at least had common sense. McKay? From the looks of it, not so much.

"If he ate these last night, then he's probably getting low blood sugar by now," said Keller, inspecting the wrappers. "How many of these did you say he usually carries with him?"

"It varies," said Teyla, "I have seen him carry as many as ten on longer missions. I doubt that he had more than five or six for today. And I doubt that he would have risked eating anything that grows here."

"With half his food gone last night, he's probably not firing on all cylinders by now," Sheppard said, "Ronon, do you still have the trail?"

Ronon sighed deeply, surveying the ground quickly. "Looks like he went out and back in a couple times." He pointed to another, heavier set of footprints at the edge of the clearing. "And at least one Wraith was here at some point. I'll sort it out."

"Make it fast. If he was here last night, I figure we're still twelve hours behind him," said Sheppard.

* * *

Rodney wasn't sure if he had turned out to be incredibly lucky or incredibly screwed. If he was a betting man, he would have said "screwed." Ultimately, the place was nothing special and completely useless to the expedition. This entire fiasco had been a complete and total waste of time and resources. On the other hand, given his current situation, it might just turn out to be a lucky find.

For whatever reason, the entire Ancient facility was one, gigantic shield generator. It could help protect him for now, of course. But Atlantis already had shields. Nothing special. Everything ventured and nothing gained.

That said, Rodney wasn't above using a simple shield to help save his ass.

Thus, he got to work. He was familiar enough with Ancient systems in general that it wasn't too much of a stretch to apply the same basic principles of Atlantis' systems. Within about a half an hour, Rodney had his tablet hooked into the main controls and the system ready to accept his command to power up.

But, there was a catch. The system was the same, yet different. The data he was getting suggested some sort of a secondary system and try as he might he could not bypass it. It was tied into the very programming that governed the use of the shield. With only two and a half hours of battery left on his tablet, he didn't have time to program a work-around, so he was stuck working with it.

Bottom line, he had to find out what it was.

Another ten minutes of work and Rodney tracked the strange secondary system back to the odd set of controls that he had seen earlier; the ones that were in the place of the DHD in Atlantis. It was a more-or-less rectangular panel of four rows of interlocking triangles. There were fifteen triangles in each row and the ones on the outer edges defined a sort of "saw-tooth" edge to the sides of the console. Most of the triangles were lit, each inscribed with a symbol in Ancient that Rodney had never seen before, the same symbol in each corresponding triangle of each row. The first triangle in each row was dark and had the numbers one through four inscribed on them. The fifth and last triangles in each row were also dark and did not have any symbols at all.

"What the hell is this thing?" he mused aloud as he transferred the connectors for his tablet to the new console.

A new display popped up on his tablet, a grid labeled in polar coordinates. The readout indicated that frequency was one of the axes. Rodney's brow furrowed as he considered this new bit of information. Another few minutes of poking around in the code showed that the controls were supposed to plot polar coordinates on the grid.

"Seriously? It's the most complicated oscilloscope toy ever?" Rodney marveled aloud. "What does that have to do with shielding? Unless..."

It occurred to Rodney that the shield around Atlantis was circular along the surface of the ocean. If the origin on the grid represented the facility, or more specifically the shield emitter, then maybe the oscilloscope was meant to plot the edge of the shield.

There was really only one way to test the theory before his tablet ran out of juice.

Cautiously, as if the control was going to shock him, Rodney reached down and hit the bottom-left-most triangle that was lit. He deeply hoped that he wasn't way off base and wasn't about to blow up the facility. Such was the risks of working with Ancient technology, though.

A tone sounded from the speakers in the room and the oscilloscope lit up with a wave bent into a circle.

"Huh. Low C." As Rodney said this, he heard the familiar sound of a shield activating outside the facility. The power conduits in the pit beyond the window hummed with activity. Several of the consoles around the room rattled momentarily.

Curiously, he reached for the console again and pressed the next triangle over in the same row. A new tone sounded on the speakers, one half-step higher.

"C sharp," Rodney realized. He looked to the oscilloscope again and found that the peaks of the waves had gathered slightly closer. The consoles rattled again. "Wait a minute. Is this...?"

Unheeding of the fact that he was speaking to an empty room or that he could not seem to finish a complete sentence, unheeding of the lightheadedness that was beginning to grow behind his eyes, unheeding of his personal safety or that the room continued to shake, Rodney continued down the line of triangles on the bottom-most row until he came to the first dark triangle. Three more notes sounded, each a half-step higher than the last. He skipped over the dark triangle and pressed the next lit one in line and it, too, was a half-step higher.

"It's a piano!" he realized. "But why would...?" Eagerly, he grabbed his tablet to check the oscilloscope. The wave crests had again moved closer together around the circle. An F continued to sound from the room's speakers.

The room had stopped rattling again and Rodney was suddenly struck by it. There weren't any working displays showing the shield itself, so there was really only one way to confirm what was actually happening outside.

Leaving behind the consoles and his tablet, Rodney raced back up the stairs to the entrance. He squinted in the warm-colored daylight of late afternoon as he cautiously poked his head up out of the hatch to look around.

Sure enough, there was a shield around the facility. Its bottom edge raced along the ground, moving inward toward the facility and outward again in a perfect wave pattern. It looked exactly like the readout on his tablet. Overhead, peaks and valleys radiated outward from the hill in spikes.

"Huh," Rodney said with an amazed smile, "it's variable shielding! Using sound waves to define its boundaries! But why not just a simple wave equation? Why use a piano to control its changes?"

As if to somehow answer his question, Rodney heard the sound of two Wraith darts grow from somewhere behind him. He turned to look and saw them heading straight for the facility. Several other specks behind them indicated that more were on the way.

The sound of a Wraith stunner striking the shield suddenly burst into existence. Rodney dropped to the metal stairs, reflexively putting an arm over his head. Several more bursts hit the shield.

"Oh crap," he said.

The Wraith had found him.


	6. Act 5

Act Five

As stunner blasts continued to pound against the shield outside and they were joined by weapons fire from the darts, Rodney sprinted back down the stairs and into the control room.

"Power, power, power, power, power," he chanted as he all but collided with the console that still had his tablet attached to it. He all but tore the connectors off of the harmonic controls – as he had already begun calling them – and reached for the crystals in the power control station.

He was having trouble concentrating on the readout. The constant F tone from the speakers in the room combined with the violent sounds from outside was making his head buzz. His fingers shook, which did not help at all either.

For a moment he paused and held up his hand. It continued to shake and he could not make it stop for love or money.

"Oh, that picked a really good time," he practically shouted to the offending extremity. He shook his head and resolved to move on.

The power readings on his tablet were showing stable for now. But a ten-thousand-year-old geothermal power source? Yeah, that could go wrong at any time, especially when drawing as much power as it probably was at the moment. And that was only going to grow as the Wraith continued their attack. Bottom line, he needed to end this and fast.

Frantically, Rodney looked around the room again, searching for something that might indicate that the facility had weapons of some kind, any kind. A screen embedded in the front window had appeared, showing a four-screen view of the area outside and a radar readout of the attacking ship.

"No kidding! Thanks!" he shouted at it.

He looked over console after console with no luck. Life sciences, earth sciences, environmental control. Sure, the Ancients build a super-secret facility to experiment with shields and they find air conditioning more important than being able to fend off a Wraith attack.

That meant that he had the power system and the shield itself to work with to save his exhausted, scared, and hungry-as-hell butt. Since he didn't really feel like blowing up today, that left the shield.

"All this technology and all I have to work with is a shield that is controlled using a damn piano! What good is that?"

The room rattled as one of the Wraith dart blasts hit the ground outside the shield. It galvanized Rodney back into motion and me made for the harmonic controls.

"Okay, okay," Rodney said, looking the controls over. "Variable shield means that I can move it. So, let's try... a B." He pressed his hand down on the last button in the second row. The tone on the speakers changed, more than an octave higher. The room shook again and Rodney watched as the boundary line marked on the Radar screen shifted, became more populated with peaks and valleys in the round. One of the lights indicating a Wraith dart had to quickly shift and bank to avoid crashing into the new boundary.

"Hold on," Rodney said, a realization coming to him, "this place doesn't need weapons. This place _is_ a weapon!" He focused in on one of the dots that represented a dart. "Okay, you creepy, life-sucking bastard. It is explosion time! Let's try a chord! Third!"

With a militant smile that he never would have admitted to, Rodney slammed his hands down on the keys for D, F, and B-flat. The chord sounded on the speakers and he watched the Radar as the boundary of the shield shifted abruptly. Two of the darts banked steeply to avoid the shield's movement, but came away unharmed.

"Oh, you're okay with that, huh? How about a fifth? You like that!"

This time, it was C, F, and A. The whole place shook as the shield moved again and the new chord issued forth. Once again, the darts deftly avoided the move.

It wasn't working.

* * *

Sheppard had learned a long time ago that it was generally a good idea to trust Ronon when it came to tracking Wraith. So when the larger man had scowled down at a set of Wraith tracks and suggested that he go on ahead alone to scout, the Lieutenant Colonel was more than comfortable with sending him onward.

Meanwhile, Sheppard, Teyla, and Keller hung back amid a thick stand of trees. Keller kept anxiously looking at her watch and seemed to be going over numbers in her head. John figured that she was going over just how bleak things looked for McKay. He tried to come up with a topic of conversation that would distract her, but not in an obvious way. But try as he might he couldn't think of anything. She probably wouldn't have bit on it anyway.

Teyla didn't really look much better, but she was far more adept at hiding it. She stayed protectively close to Keller, her eyes always on the move. John didn't like the way her feet kept shuffling, ever so slightly. She was clearly nervous and he figured she was probably feeling the presence of the Wraith fairly keenly, especially while waiting with little to do.

A faint rustle of leaves was the only sign that Ronon had returned before he emerged from the trees. Keller jumped and Sheppard and Teyla almost brought their P-90s to bear.

"I hate it when you do that," Sheppard said with mild irritation.

Ronon took it in stride. "Sorry," he rumbled, then chucked a thumb over his shoulder, "somethin' you should see." With nothing further, he turned and headed back into the woods, obviously expecting that they would follow.

He led them to a small clearing ringed with trees. Hanging down from the branches of one of them, long trails of twisted bandages that looked like the ones that were in their first aid supplies dangled. At the other end, they were attached to a small bundle of sharpened branches and rocks.

The victim of the obvious trap was still pinned in place against the tree he had been nailed into by the bundle. The Wraith was unmoving, several bullet holes were in his chest as well, and one in his head.

"That looks like Beretta ammo," Sheppard said as Keller began the grizzly work of looking over the body.

"Good trap," said Ronon, then pointed to the Wraith, "lousy grouping and lots of ammo."

"Rodney has never been the best shot," Teyla said diplomatically.

"Yeah, this is his handy work, all right," Sheppard agreed, "looks like he was still alive and kickin' at least to here."

"This Wraith wasn't killed more than a few hours ago," Keller said, "so he can't be that far from here, right?"

Ronon shrugged. "From the spacing of his tracks, looks like he ran pretty fast that way." He indicated a direction opposite the one they had come.

"Not before taking the stunner," Sheppard said, pointing to the Wraith's empty holster, and not without a hint of professional pride.

Just then, the ground rumbled under them. It wasn't enough to send them stumbling, but it put them back on high alert. The woods were quiet for a moment, then the sound of birds calling on the wing surrounded them.

"What was that?" Keller asked, nervously.

"Shh!" Sheppard ordered, putting up a hand. From behind them, the sound of Wraith darts grew. "Hit the dirt!" he exclaimed, pulling on Keller's backpack and making for the nearest patch of shrubbery. Ronon and Teyla did likewise. They reached their impromptu hiding places just as four darts screamed by over head.

After they passed, the team slowly and cautiously poked their heads out of their hiding places.

"John!" Teyla exclaimed, pointing to a patch of blue sky through the trees. Dust was swirling through the air, there.

"I think McKay's over there," Ronon said, dryly, climbing back to his feet.

"I think you're right," Sheppard agreed, already moving to lead the charge. "Let's get moving!"

* * *

Rodney was at a loss. He could not pick out chords fast enough that the shield could be used in the way he wanted; in the way he was pretty sure the Ancients had intended. As blasts from both stunner and dart weapons continued to impact the shield outside, Rodney stared at the harmonic controls in confusion.

There had to be something that he was missing. He had thought about simply pressing keys at random, as fast as he could. But the shield did not seem to be able to maintain integrity that way. When he had tried it, several weak spots had formed in the shield and he had come pretty close to letting a few shots from the darts make it through.

Random keys was noise and noise meant destructive interference. In other words, not good for maintaining a clear line of a wave form. He needed a way to increase the speed at which he created chords and changed between them. If he could just up the tempo a little then he could...

And all at once, the answer hit him. It had been so obvious that he had missed it.

Music.

And with that, all the pieces of the puzzle snapped into place. For the Ancients, the line between science and art was blurred, sometimes non-existent. Thinking back to the control mechanism that had opened Janus' lab on Atlantis, he could hardly believe that he had not reached this conclusion sooner. Janus had used a chord – a major chord appealing to the ear – to open the gateway to his secret lab. Why not use something pleasing to the ear to control this mechanism?

"So, I need a song," Rodney said, thinking aloud, "something fast and with lots of notes. Uh... Beethoven. Scherzo from Symphony 9. Crazy enough it might work. Okay, clinically talented player, let's see what you can do."

For a moment, Rodney hesitated over the controls, wiggling his fingers as they itched in a long-forgotten excitement for the music. He concentrated on the controls, willing them to connect to his brain in the way that Ancient controls did in order to help him make this work. This thing wasn't a piano and it had been years, in any case. He was going to need all the help he could get.

Rodney hit the first few chords as decisively as he could. The music paused as, inside his mind, kettle drums beat out a pause, as if the first few chords had been a warning shot. And then, the real fun began. The music went bananas, tumbling up and down the scales in a long series of rapid chords and notes.

He settled into the music somewhat uncomfortably, feeling somewhat buffeted by the notes as they sounded from the facility's speakers. He had to concentrate on the controls intently, so he could hardly spare any attention for the Radar readout. A small part of his mind desperately wanted to know, though, whether or not it was working. The Ancient system must have understood that because he somehow knew that at least one of the darts had impacted on the side of the shield.

He played on, the music moving up and down the scales with aplomb. Rodney sunk deeper into the music and before long his mind had conjured the entire symphony, though his controls gave him only the tones from the speakers.

Outside, the shield moved in time to the music. Waves spiked outward and dove inward from the facility. Particularly high notes jutted so far out into the area that they began to impact the hillsides, cutting into earth and solid rock without even slowing. Somehow, that information returned to Rodney as well and a thought managed to form itself within the swirling sounds of his symphony.

Now he knew where Ronon's fjords had come from.

And still, he played on. The Wraith darts dodged the wild tendrils of the shield desperately. But, even if they had been able to identify what was happening as music, they never would have been able to recognize the Earth-native melodies and sense of musical scale. One by one, the inevitable happened and the darts began to impact the shield and destruct in exploding balls of fire.

Rodney upped the tempo of the music in his mind, though for some reason it seemed to take a great deal of effort to do so. If there had been any part of him capable of noticing it, he would have seen that the controls were responding faster than he could press them. But the effort was draining every bit of concentration that he had.

He had to hold on. He had to keep that connection to the shield. Long ago, music had meant his life. Now it meant life again.

* * *

Aboard the _Daedalus_, all was an oddly tense quiet. The bridge crew was going about their business like a set of well-oiled machines, never speaking beyond what was strictly necessary to do their assigned tasks. Besides that, everyone was waiting for the other shoe to drop.

While the well-oiled machines did their work, Colonel Caldwell was left with little to do but stare through the window down at the planet below them. It was as if he was willing Sheppard and his team to hurry the hell up. He could almost imagine the younger lieutenant-colonel bounding around like a wannabe superhero, far exceeding his mission parameters just because no one was there to tell him not to. The man was aggravating but, Caldwell had to admit, effective.

Caldwell's attention was drawn back to his well-oiled machine when an indicator sounded from his XO's board. The Lieutenant frowned at his readouts for a moment and tapped a few controls.

"Lieutenant?" Caldwell asked.

"Sir, I'm getting a reading from the Hive Ship," the XO reported.

"What kind of reading?"

"I'm… not really sure, sir."

"Put it up," Caldwell said, indicating the HUD at the front of the bridge. A few taps of the controls and a moment later, the wire-frame image of the planet below and the Wraith Hive Ship beyond came up again. On the eastern horizon of the planet, a tiny dot was speeding away from the Hive Ship.

Caldwell narrowed his eyes at it in suspicion, leaning forward in his seat and gripping an armrest. "What is that?" he asked.

As if in answer to his question, the readout on the HUD suddenly gave a flash from the little dot. It expanded outward in a spherical cloud of even tinier points. Then another flash and another expanding sphere. And another.

"Oh crap," Caldwell muttered under his breath. "keep us out of that thing's line of sight!"

"Aye sir, adjusting course. But it's moving and we're not," said the XO, "odds of us out-running it are slim."

The engines of the _Daedalus_ roared to life and the ship was in motion moments later. Caldwell half-sat, half-fell back in his seat as the ship lurched, his eyes still glued to the bridge's HUD. To his dismay, the expanding concentric rings caught up with the light indicating the position of the _Daedalus_ and bounced back to the dot where they had come from. A moment later and the HUD showed that the Wraith Hive Ship was in motion.

"Dammit!" Caldwell swore, punching some controls on his arm rest. "All hands, duty stations," his voice rang out over the ship-wide PA, "alert status." He then thumbed the PA off again and looked back to his XO. "We're about to be in a firefight. Sheppard just lost his window. Can you get a signal to him?"

The Lieutenant shook his head, still plying his controls. "Negative, sir. There's still too much interference in that area on the planet. We can't get through. Do we break orbit, sir?"

Caldwell would have lied if he had said that he hadn't considered the option. It would have been prudent. It would have been tactically sound. It would have been safest for the ship. It would have been safest for Atlantis, Earth, and the Stargate Program.

Ultimately, though, he shook his head. "No," he said, "we'll hold out and give Sheppard some time. Keep trying him."

Damn. Sheppard was wearing off on him.

* * *

The sight that greeted Sheppard and his team as they came to the edge of the tree line was understandably chaotic. They crouched in the bushes nearby, overlooking a gently-sloping caldera-shaped valley. In the center of the valley, a round, bald hill sat and about that hill the strangest Ancient-design shield that Sheppard had ever seen was stretching and flexing, waving about peaks and valleys in a weird, organic sort of way that he had never seen before. Around it, Wraith darts swarmed, dodging shifting tendrils of shield, sometimes impacting on it with giant fireballs. A multitude of Wraith soldier drones marched along the base of the flexing shield, firing their stunners at it as they ran about to dodge it. Dust rose about the area as the shield cut into the landscape, toppling some rock formations and cutting new ones.

"The hell is that!" Sheppard asked over the din.

"Dunno," Ronon responded in kind, "but it's working." With a jerk of his chin, he indicated a wraith dart that had just exploded.

"There must be some sort of base left behind by the Ancestors," said Teyla, not without a hint of wonder.

"Rodney's power readings," Sheppard agreed with a nod.

"Call me crazy, but," Keller ventured, "wouldn't power output like that cause an energy source to deplete pretty fast?"

Keller was right and Sheppard knew it. The power drain Atlantis experienced when its normal shields were in use was proof enough for him. He could only imagine what was going on inside whatever facility there might be under the hill. If Rodney was in there, he was probably scrambling around like crazy trying to keep things up and running.

"We gotta end this and fast," he concluded, "Ronon, take the left and start taking out the drones. Take some shots at the darts if you can, too. Teyla, you do the same on the right. Doc, you hang back here and stay out of sight, but keep your gun ready in case."

"You got it," Ronon said, thumbing his blaster out of stun mode and moving off swiftly. Teyla gave a nod and went in the opposite direction, her P-90 at the ready. Keller awkwardly drew her handgun and flipped off the safety, crouching lower in the bushes.

Satisfied, Sheppard readied his own gun and moved in, straight for the chaos that was the whirling and twisting shield and the battle surrounding it. As he moved in, he picked a Wraith drone and squeezed off a shot. He followed it with another, dropping the Wraith. That drew the attention of several others and he soon found that he was a focus of their attack. He threw himself behind a boulder, obviously newly settled in its place, and out of the way of their stunner blasts. Covered for a moment, he took an opportunity to fire at a dart that was passing overhead. Smoke sprang from its wing and it whirled out of control and into the shield. Then he focused on the drones again, popping out of his cover at odd intervals to fire at them. One by one, they began to go down.

Ronon preferred a much more direct approach. Years of fighting the Wraith had given him a keen sense of their abilities and their fighting styles. Firing off shots from his blaster, he made straight for the nearest group of Wraith. The first to go down was their leader, a more lithe and graceful looking Wraith that was shouting orders to the drones. When the drones turned their attention to him and fired, Ronon stepped aside of it with an impressive jerk of his body. He flowed right into a duck that brought him under the next one and fired at the group, felling a drone. Still moving forward, he dodged another shot and then dropped into a roll, ending while firing again and dropping another drone.

Teyla took a more nimble tact. She darted in and out of trees and boulders, using them as cover as she moved about swiftly. The swirling dust clouds became her allies as well, confusing the wraith drones. In this way, the Athosian rained P-90 fire down upon them from several directions. One drone was felled by a hail of bullets from her gun. Another was confused and met an untimely end when it was thrown by an on-coming tendril of the shield.

Between their assault and the swirling maelstrom of the shield, it wasn't long before the Wraith began to run out of man-power for their attack. Finally, the remaining Wraith darts swept low to scoop up their remaining ground forces and flew off into the distance with a whine. Sheppard called Teyla and Ronon back and they all returned to find Keller, still crouched in the bushes.

"Anyone else think that was kind of easy?" Sheppard asked, suspicion is his voice as he stared off after the retreating darts.

"The fight did seem rather half-hearted," Teyla agreed.

"The _Daedalus_?" Ronon asked.

"Yeah, that's what I'm afraid of," Sheppard affirmed. He tapped his radio. "_Daedalus_, this is Sheppard." He was met only with static. He tried again a couple of times before tapping the radio off again. "Looks like we're on our own, still."

In the valley, the whirling tendrils of the shield had ceased moving. The shield settled into a stationary position, defining an odd waving pattern along the ground and spikes protruding from the surface. The dust it had kicked up had begun to settle and they could now see more clearly the hill in the center of it.

"So, seriously," Ronon rumbled, "what is that?"

"Well," Sheppard ventured, stepping back out of the tree line and into the open space to better regard the shield and the hill, "it's Ancient technology, that's for sure. And as far as we know, there's only two people on this planet who can run it and that's me and Rodney."

"Then he must be inside!" Keller exclaimed, stepping out of her hiding place to join him.

"But how do we reach him?" Telya asked.

"Well, can't reach the _Daedalus_, but..." Again, Sheppard tapped his earpiece to activate his radio. "McKay, this is Sheppard, do you read?" There was static and a long pause, but no response. "McKay, this is Sheppard. You there, buddy?"

"Maybe he can't respond?" Ronon ventured.

Keller took another step closer to the shield and the hill and tapped her own earpiece. "Rodney, it's Jennifer!" she said. "We're outside, but we can't get to you. You need to drop the shield and let us in."

"The Wraith are gone, Rodney," Sheppard pressed, "let us in."

"Yeah, yeah," a voice sounded through the considerable static, somewhat weak and distracted sounding, "just... just gimme a sec..."

There was another unbearably long pause. Sheppard and the rest of the team watched the shield for several agonizing moments, desperately looking for some flicker or dim that suggested it was dropping. Finally, the peak at the very top of the spiky dome vanished. The opening spread outward, jumping over peaks and valleys in one large ring until finally it reached the outline of the wave at the ground.

"There's a... a hatch," Rodney's voice came through the radio, "at the top."

Sheppard and the team were in motion immediately, almost before Rodney had told them about the hatch. They covered the ground quickly. Ronon with his long strides and experience moving quickly overland, was the first to make it to the top of the hill. He scouted the hatch and had declared it secure by the time the others caught up with him.

Sheppard led the way down the stairs and into the Ancient base. He paused for a moment, casting a gaze about the room with that odd sense of déjà vu he always got when he entered rooms where the Ancients had obviously reused designs. For some reason, he always found it weird, even though it made perfect sense for building designs to be reused. It happened on Earth all the time, after all.

Keller pushed past him and made her way over to the dirty, tired, and shaking figure leaning over the console at the very front of the room. She didn't even spare a glance at the rather impressive-looking fiery pit on the other side of the window.

"Rodney?" she asked, swinging her backpack off and resting it on the console. "Are you all right?" Immediately, she began to pull some items from her bag. The first to come out was a blood sugar meter. Gently, she took one of his hands and pricked a finger. He didn't even respond. Keller took the strip and plugged it into the meter and set it aside to let it take its reading. "Hey, you with us?" she pressed, turning his face to her.

"I gotta siddown," Rodney muttered, his knees beginning to buckle.

"Whoa!" Keller exclaimed, reaching to steady him.

Sheppard covered the rest of the distance over to them in a couple of strides. Between him and Keller, they managed to move Rodney away from the front console and over to a wall nearby before sitting him down against it.

The blood sugar meter chirped, indicating that it had a reading. Keller grabbed it and checked the number, her face twisting into a scowl. "Yeah, I don't like that number," she said, pulling a field injector from her bag. She brought it back over to Rodney, efficiently found a vein in his arm, and injected its contents. "Just a little something to help your blood sugar," she told him, "you should start to feel a little better soon."

Ronon had taken up a post near the stairs and was acting as watch. He turned back to Sheppard with a quick glance. "They might come back. We should get outta here."

"Maybe with the shield down, the energy signatures aren't so bad down here," Sheppard mused. He tapped his earpiece again, hoping against hope to get a radio signal through. "_Daedalus_, this is Sheppard," he said, looking up through the hatch, as if he could see the ship in orbit above.

To his relief, a static-mangled voice answered. "Sheppard, what's your status down there?" It was Caldwell, sounding frazzled.

"We found our wayward scientist," Sheppard replied, "he's in pretty bad shape. We could use a beam out."

"We're in the middle of a firefight up here," said Caldwell, "we'll have to do some fancy flying. Stand by."

"Wait!" Rodney exclaimed. "We can't just leave this place to the Wraith, ATA gene or no."

"That is a fair point," said Teyla, "even though they cannot use it now, it does not mean they will not be able to figure it out in time."

Rodney waved a tired hand toward the window and the lava pit outside it. "Overload that thing," he said, "make a volcano outta this place. Should take care of it."

Sheppard nodded, moving over to the controls and Rodney's discarded tablet. "Talk me through it, fast," he said.

Even in the state he was in, it only took Rodney about five minutes to instruct Sheppard on setting the Ancient system to overload. It turned out that it had not been a possibility that the Ancients had overlooked. They had even thought about setting a time-delay. Sheppard set the timer for five minutes, but held off on hitting the start button until he heard back from Caldwell.

He only hoped it wouldn't be long.

* * *

Things got pretty hairy pretty fast aboard the _Daedalus_. Not only had the hive ship moved in to attack, they had released their darts to harry them. At the helm, Caldwell's XO was pushing his flying skills to the limit, dodging as much fire as he could to try and keep strain off the Asgaard shields.

"See what you can do about getting us closer to Sheppard's position," Caldwell ordered him, gripping the armrests of his seat as fire rocked the shields and the ship in turn.

"Do my best, sir, but that's where the hive ship is moving in from," the XO nodded, feverishly plying his controls.

Caldwell punched the control on his armrest to activate the radio. "Hermiod, this may be the closest we can get. Can you pick up Sheppard's team?"

"I am reading their subcutaneous transmitters, Colonel," the alien voice replied, "but we are still a fair distance from what I would consider a safe line of sight. However, it is feasible."

"I'll take it. We'll try to minimize the time the shields are down. Be ready to grab 'em on my mark."

"Standing by."

With time short, Caldwell decided to fill in both his XO and Sheppard at the same time. He punched his radio controls again and dialed up Sheppard. "Colonel Sheppard, we have a small window. We're going to drop shields and pick you up within about five seconds. You set down there?"

"Stand by, sir," came the reply. There was a short pause, then Sheppard's voice came back on. "Our window is about four minutes and thirty before this place blows, so any time you wanna do this is fine by us."

"Right. Stand by for beam out." Caldwell keyed in Hermiod on the engineering channel again. "All right people five second window. Drop shields, beam, raise shields. In three… two… one… Mark!"

"Dropping shields!" the XO exclaimed. The ship was almost immediately buffeted by the full force of weapons fire.

"I have them," came Hermiod's voice a moment later.

"Shields up!" said the XO. Behind them, somewhere on the bridge, some electrical panels were blowing out. Caldwell could hear the tell-tale sound of a fire extinguisher.

"Good! Set a course and get us the hell out of here!" Caldwell barked.

The _Daedalus_ broke orbit swiftly, turning its aft section to the enemy and letting the shields take the full force of the Wraith weapons fire. As soon as they were clear enough of the planet, a hyperspace window opened and the ship slipped through into faster-than-light travel.

On the surface of the planet below, a new volcano erupted, wiping out any trace of the Ancient facility.

* * *

Back on Atlantis, almost a day later and with P14-626 a distant memory and dozens of light-years away, Rodney was contentedly sitting on one of the Infirmary beds, chowing down on a tray full of food with one hand. Jennifer had Rodney's other hand and was once again stabbing a finger with her blood sugar meter.

"You almost done doing that?" Rodney asked around a bite of something resembling roast beef.

"Last time, I promise," Jennifer said in a mock tone of placation, plugging the test strip into the meter, "I just want to make sure you've leveled off." The device chirped and she turned it to show him the number. "And it looks like you have."

"Good. Does that mean I can have my computer back?" Rodney asked, reaching for his cup of blue jell-o, "because I am bored to death, here."

Jennifer sighed a long-suffering sigh, a smile lighting her features as she packed the blood sugar meter back into its pouch. "Only if you use it for solitaire, because I'm keeping you off active duty for the next twenty-four hours."

"Oh come on!" Rodney exclaimed. "I have so many ideas to work on! I mean, it never even occurred to me to try and use the shield as a weapon. I gotta follow up on it."

"Dost mine ears deceive me?" came the voice of John Sheppard as he strolled into the room. He walked over to the nearest counter and leaned against it with a smirk. "Is Doctor Doctor M Rodney McKay actually volunteering for more work?"

"Oh, hey! No, no, no, no, no," Rodney protested, wagging a finger in Sheppard's direction, "I will cop to being a coward, a weakling, and an arrogant ass. And that last one, because, really, what don't I have to be arrogant about?"

Just outside of Rodney's line of sight, Jennifer shook her head and rolled her eyes at the lieutenant colonel. Sheppard's smirk deepened in reply. The communication was clear; they both knew better.

"But a shirker?" Rodney continued, scooping a spoonful of jell-o out of its little plastic cup, "no, no, no, my friend. That is one thing that Rodney McKay is not. Particularly when there's something really cool to work on." Somehow, Rodney actually managed to put the spoonful of jell-o into his mouth while wearing a look of abject pride.

"None the less," Jennifer said, beginning to move off and return to her regular work, "you've been through a lot. Take a day off. Doctor's orders."

"Sucks having a doctor for a girlfriend, huh?" Sheppard said when he thought she was out of earshot.

"I heard that!"

"You trying to get me in trouble?" Rodney asked as Sheppard wandered closer.

"It's what I'm here for," Sheppard replied with a sarcastic grimace. He suddenly turned more serious as he lighted on the edge of the bed that Rodney was sitting in. "Actually, I came to check up and you and to apologize for getting you left behind like that."

"Oh, you are such a martyr!" Rodney exclaimed. "Please, John! You and I both know it wasn't your fault, so don't even go there. I mean, one of these days, you'd think I'd be able to start keeping up with the rest of you guys. But apparently, I'm doomed to be the slow, clumsy one for life." He gave a sigh, pushing aside the emptied food try. "It's so embarrassing, having to be baby-sat all the time."

"I don't keep people on my team who need to be baby-sat, Rodney," Sheppard said with a frown, "and you proved it with all this. You kept your head and stayed alive in a rough situation. I've been stuck behind enemy lines alone before. Believe me, it ain't easy. You did a damn good job staying alive."

"Ronon'll probably disagree with you."

"Ronon's a survivalist freak-baby."

"Good point." Rodney gave another, long drawn out sigh. "Oh, all right, fine. I'll stop beating myself up about it. Just gimme a couple days on it, all right?"

"I will if you will," Sheppard replied, his smirk returning. He gave Rodney's shoulder a playful nudge and began heading for the door. "Twenty four hours. I don't want to see you in your lab."

Rodney waved his hand after him dismissively. "Yeah, fine, fine, fine. Oh hey!" He looked up at Sheppard's retreating form, stopping the lieutenant colonel in his tracks. When Sheppard had turned back, he continued. "Something's been bothering me. The whole time, I couldn't remember what the R in SER stands for."

Sheppard took a few steps back in Rodney's direction, a look of sheer, uncomprehending confusion on his face. "Seriously?" he asked, his voice rising a tone a step or two, "Rodney, it really scares me what your sizable mind ends up forgetting, sometimes."

"Yeah, yeah, would you just tell me so I can stop worrying about it?"

Try as he might, Sheppard couldn't erase the incredulous look off his face. "SER," he said, "S. E. R. Survival, evasion, and _rescue_. That wasn't foremost on your mind at the time?"

"Ah!" Rodney said, tossing a hand up with realization. "That explains it. Didn't have to bother remembering it. Rescue is your department and you're good at it and will do it unless you're dead, so I didn't ever have to worry."

"Didn't have to worry!"

"Hey, as vast as my intellect is," Rodney said, absently waving a hand in the direction of his own head, "there's still only so much space up here. Why should I bother remembering something that's not important?"

Still giving Rodney a look that clearly said he thought the scientist was stark-raving mad, Sheppard gave a slow nod. "We're going to have a long talk about what's important in the field."

"Ah, ah, ah!" Rodney exclaimed, holding up an index finger and giving a smug grin, "not for twenty-four hours, remember?"

"You _would_ remember that!" Sheppard shook his head, still bewildered, and turned to leave. "I'm gonna go find Ronon and have a _sane_ conversation."

Still wearing his smug grin, Rodney wiggled his fingers in a wave at Sheppard's retreating form. Once he was alone again, the scientist settled back against the pillows for a much-deserved break.

* * *

Thanks for reading, everyone! This was my first "full-length" fic for SGA and I really had a lot of fun writing it. I hope you all had as much fun reading it.

When I write fics, especially for television shows, I tend to think very visually. In my head, this looks like an episode. I decided to really push that idea for this fic, hence the teaser and five acts format. I really wanted this to feel like you could sit down in front of the TV for an hour and watch this as an episode, mini-cliff-hangers and all.

I only got into the Stargate franchise as a whole when I caught a rerun of "Sunday" on the channel formerly known as SciFi. I suddenly found that I couldn't get enough Atlantis and burned through all five seasons in a few weeks. Damn me for getting into this show after it ended. I have yet to tackle SG-1, since ten seasons is a little intimidating, but I try to compensate with research where I can. Please tell me if I've screwed up something fundamental. My heart definitely lies with Atlantis, though.

So, again, thanks for reading. And always remember; fanfic authors love feedback!

Ciao!


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